Beware of the Beast (5 page)

Charlotte had to smile, even though she felt more like
crying. "Laura, I've told you the truth. What more can I say?"

Laura sniffed. "All right, have it your way. I just never
thought there'd come a time when my little Charley told me
liesl
"

"They're not lies, Laura." Charlotte spread her hands.
"Honest to God, I'm not about
to
enter a harem or anything. He -
" she
gestured with her thumb, "he wants to marry me.
Is that so strange? Am I so unattractive?"
     

"You're deliberately misunderstanding me, Charley. You
know you're the prettiest girl I know. Too thin, of course,
but that's natural, in the circumstances." Laura stared at the girl anxiously.
"You going to be happy, Charley?
This man
got lots of money? He
treat
you good?"

"I - hope so," said Charlotte, bending her head so that
Laura should not see the tears in her eyes. "Now - excuse me.
I must get changed."

Charlotte was aware of Laura's reproachful eyes following
her up the stairs, but there was nothing she could say to
assuage her anxiety. Besides, she could not shoulder Laura's
worries. She had more than enough of her own.

The car that waited outside for Alex Faulkner was a chauffeur-driver Mercedes, the kind of car which hitherto Charlotte had only glimpsed around the town. A second man
was seated beside the chauffeur, and both men got out at their
approach.

"
Vittorio
Santos, my chauffeur," Alex indicated offhandedly.
"And his brother,
Dimitrios
, my - bodyguard."

A bodyguard!
As the luxurious vehicle rolled away, Char
lotte stole a glance at the man seated so indolently beside her on the wide back seat which left fully two feet between them.
Until then, she had not given a thought to the possibility that this man could well be a target for unscrupulous revolution
aries requiring a hostage. If -
when
- she became his wife, would she require a bodyguard as well?

His wife!
Even those words were startling. Mrs. Faulkner!
It didn't sound real. Not to her. And then other, more
intimate thoughts entered her head. To be this man's wife would be to submit herself to his every demand. He would
have the right to share her bed, to make love to her whenever
he chose, to deny her even the smallest privacy.

She trembled violently. The intimacies between a man and a
woman were as yet unknown to her. Oh, she had listened to
the girls in the school dormitory at night whispering about
their experiences. She had attended biology' classes and had
the whole sexual act explained to her in detail. But what was
the spoken or written word when compared to actual ex
perience? The whole thing seemed vastly overrated, and
although she had had boy-friends and indulged in kissing
and a little mild petting, she had never felt any urge to explore
further. The very idea seemed slightly indecent to her.
To
imagine this man, this
stranger,
seeing her without her
clothes.
... She shrank a .little further into her corner. If it did come to
that,
and she supposed that one day it would
have to, she would make sure she was adequately clothed in
pyjamas
or a nightdress, and safely under the bedcovers.

Alex's apartment temporarily allayed her fears in a surge
of pure admiration. The rooms at the house in Glebe Square
had not been small but these rooms were enormous - wide
and spacious, with expanses of soft carpet where one could
stretch at will. The lounge had long windows, with slatted
blinds, there were soft velvet couches in shades of blue and
green, modern Swedish-style furniture cheek-by-jowl with
what were obviously antiques and silky off-white carpeting.

An elderly man greeted them. Alex introduced him as
Potter and it soon became apparent that Potter was a resident
at the
apartment,
catering for his employer should it be
necessary, although there was an excellent service restaurant
on the ground floor of the block, and caretaking in his absence.
Alex introduced her to the old man as his fiancée, much to Charlotte's dismay, and it was Potter who suggested that she
might like to see
all the
apartment.

To her relief, Alex said he had some telephone calls to
make and disappeared into a room which Potter explained
was his study. Then they went on a tour of inspection.

Charlotte had never seen such luxury. There were three
bedrooms, all with
colour
televisions and hi-fi equipment as
well as the usual fitted units. There was a
panelled
dining
room with a long table capable of seating more than a dozen
people in the soft, velvet-seated chairs. The kitchen, too,
contained eating facilities, and was sleek and modern.

Charlotte asked, half reluctantly, which room Alex used, but Potter seemed to find nothing strange in this. Indeed, he
had taken her arrival in his stride, and she wondered whether
he found anything odd in his employer producing as his
fiancée a girl he had never seen before.

"This is Mr. Faulkner's room," he said, indicating the
second largest bedroom, a room designed in shades of coffee
and cream, with thick apricot satin curtains at the window.
All the rooms had bathrooms adjoining, and Charlotte
looked into Alex's bathroom with
a certain
desperation. What
had she expected to find here?
she
wondered, looking at the
coffee-
coloured
bath and basin, the cream tiled shower
cubicle. No man could imprint his personality on somewhere h
e used so fleetingly. The whole apartment was beautiful, but that was all it was.
A shell - which only occasionally
housed its occupant.

She entered the lounge again alone, Potter having excused himself to go to the kitchen, and found Alex lounging com
fortably on one of the velvet couches examining some papers
he had taken from a briefcase beside him. He looked up at
her entrance, however, and thrusting the papers aside, got
to his feet.

"I have ordered lunch to be sent up," he told her smoothly.
"I hope you like roast beef and Yorkshire pudding. I always
eat English food when I'm in England. It never tastes the
same elsewhere."
        

"I don't think I could eat a thing," Charlotte retorted
tautly.

''Nonsense."
He shrugged his broad shoulders. "Food can
be a delight as well as a necessity, and the restaurant here can
be recommended. Your clothes reveal that you've lost weight.
Perhaps we should do something about them this afternoon."

"What's wrong with what I'm wearing?" she demanded resentfully, looking down at the navy wool suit which she
had last worn at her father's funeral. "I'll have you know this
suit was made to my design at a boutique where I - where I
worked before..."

"You haven't worked since your father's death," Alex
stated calmly, revealing a closer knowledge of her affairs than
she had imagined. "And many of the clothes sold there are
cheap and badly finished."

Charlotte caught her breath. "You don't know that"

"I assure you, I do. Besides, you don't suit that flat shade
of navy. Royal blue would suit you far better."

"Have - have you been spying on me?"

"Not personally, no. I left my binoculars in Greece."

"Don't make a fool of me!" Charlotte shifted restlessly.
"Well? Have you had someone watching me?"

Alex sighed resignedly. "In my position it's necessary to investigate everybody I come into contact with
- "
"Oh, God! That's terrible!"
"But necessary, I do assure you."
Charlotte turned away, biting her lips. "I could never be
like that."

"You may have to be," he replied quietly. Then, as the
doorbell chimed: "This sounds like lunch."

They ate in the lounge from the folding table sent up from the restaurant, seated by the windows which allowed one a
panoramic view far beyond the Thames, to the expanse of
green which was Richmond Park. During the meal, Alex
talked, general things mostly which Charlotte answered in
monosyllables but which nevertheless relaxed her sufficiently
to enjoy at least a part of the meal> and she guessed that this
was his intention^ A clear vegetable broth was followed by
the roast beef he had promised, and to finish there was a
chocolate sponge pudding. He smiled when Charlotte refused
the dessert, and had a second helping.

"You must forgive me," he said, pouring custard from a
jug. "Sponge puddings have always been my
favourite
form
of dessert and I always indulge my weakness when I am in London. Henri, the chef downstairs, keeps this on his menu
especially for me."

"I'm surprised you don't have a food taster," remarked Charlotte rather spitefully, and Alex's smile deepened.

"It may come to that," he conceded dryly. "Are you as
venomous as you sound?"

Charlotte sighed
frustratedly
. "Well!" she said defensively.
"Private investigators, bodyguards!
It's archaic! I'm sur
prised they don't live in the apartment!"

"Oh, but they do," Alex told her mildly.

"But - we left them downstairs ..."

"I didn't want to alarm you," he replied, finishing the
wine in his glass and getting up from the table wiping his
mouth with the table napkin. "I thought we would take it
slowly."

"Slowly!
Slowly!"
Charlotte stared at him angrily. "You
call forcing someone to marry you taking it slowly?"

Alex shrugged, regarding the array of bottles revealed by the opening of the cocktail cabinet with apparent considera
tion. "I would suggest you started accepting that situation
and considered the advantageous aspects of it."

"What advantageous aspects?"

Alex held up a bottle of cognac, but Charlotte shook her
head quickly and with an indifferent gesture he poured some
into a balloon glass. Then he walked back to where she was
still sitting at the table in the window, cradling the glass in his hands.

"Let me tell you about
Lydros
, hmm?" He paused. "It is
an island approximately fifty miles off the mainland of
Greece, in the group of islands known as the
Cyclades
." He swallowed a mouthful of his cognac, ignoring Charlotte's
apparent disinterest. "We are very lucky on
Lydros
- there is an adequate water supply and we are able to grow much of our own produce. Old Spiro Santos, the father of those two brothers who also work for me, makes wine, and it is
rich and sweet, like the grapes from which it is squeezed."

"I'm really not interested," retorted Charlotte tightly, but
Alex merely smiled that infuriating smile and Charlotte
could have slapped him,

"You will be," he assured her. "You will be living there
in a little less than two weeks. I have to leave for New York
tomorrow. I shall be away approximately ten days. I hope to
be back in England on the fourteenth and we are to be married on the fifteenth."

Charlotte's breath seemed to be stuck in her throat. "But
why?" she appealed, his confidence panicking her ail over
again. "Isn't there anything I can say - anything I can do to
make you change your mind?"

"No." His expression hardened abruptly. "You have the
choice - marry me, bear my child, and, in possibly a year,
I'll set you free. Deny me that right, and I will not be res
ponsible for the consequences."

"You're - you're a beast!
Inhuman!"

"Why? Because I choose to make you
honour
your father's
agreement?"

"No. No, because — well, because you don't
need
to do this.
You -
" She
bent her head. "You're an - attractive man. I'm
sure you could find some other woman equally suitable
- "