Second Best Wife (19 page)

'And allowed you to grow up?' Stuart had said very gently.

Celine had looked at him, her heart in her eyes. 'I'll try,' she had said.

Stuart had gone away shortly after that. Georgina and Celine had waited for William until they were both rubbing their eyes to keep awake, it was so late. Georgina had insisted that they dined at their usual hour because there were the servants to consider, but still William hadn't come.

'You go to bed, Georgie,' Celine had suggested, after they had finished their coffee out on the verandah. She had stretched, holding her arms high above her head. 'I feel so much lighter! I'll wait up for William, shall I?'

Georgina had thought the younger girl might have wanted to speak to William on her own, so she had gone meekly to bed, but that had been a long time ago now. Celine began the nursery rhyme all over again, a note of irrepressible laughter in her voice.

'Do you like that one?' she asked when she had finished.

'It's not my favourite,' William answered her.

'No,' she agreed, 'but I know what is!
Georgie Porgie—'

'Where is she?'

'She was tired. She went to bed.'

'Good idea! Off you go too, Pussycat! Oh, and Celine, don't worry about anything any more. It will all come right now.'

'With Stuart too?' And then, when William didn't answer, 'Georgie doesn't want him. She said she doesn't. Besides, she's married to you!'

Georgina craned to hear William's answer, but it was lost on the evening breeze. All she heard after that was Celine's footsteps in the hall as she went to her room and the sound of William locking up the french windows for the night.

He came into her room through the bathroom. She had not expected him and she lay very still, half hoping he would go away again.

'Georgie?'

'Go away!' she said.

His laughter gave her a winded feeling, as if she had been hit hard in the solar plexus.

'Georgie, my love,' he said, 'you've done it again! All the way home I've been telling myself how pleased you'd be to please me, that there wouldn't be a word of argument from you, only a soft, gentle woman welcoming me home —'

Georgina sat up in a rush. 'You should have known better!' she began.

He sat down on the bed beside her. 'Will you always want to fight, my Georgie?'

She hugged her knees tightly, considering whether she should turn on the bedside light or not. If she did, she would be able to see him the better, but that went both ways and he might discover the traces of tears on her cheeks and draw his own conclusions. He had been gone so long! But she would much rather he didn't know how his absence had affected her.

'Georgina — '

'If you come any closer, I'll—I'll black your other eye for you, William Ayres!' she threatened.

She heard his breath catch. 'You can try!' he retorted. 'Because I'm coming a whole lot closer, Georgie Porgie. Move over!'

She stared at him through the darkness, her heart taking up a new andyexotic rhythm within her. 'What happens if I don't?' she asked him.

He scooped her up into his arms and deposited her on the far side of the bed, holding her hands in one of his behind her back. 'I've waited for this moment for a long time,' he said, and his voice made her tremble much as his kisses had earlier. 'You're not going to spoil it for me, are you?'

She stopped struggling. 'William?' she said on a note of wonder. 'Is there anything to spoil?'

She felt his laughter against her ribs and she gave way willingly before his questing hands. 'As if you didn't know,' he said softly. And he kissed her.

CHAPTER TEN

Georgina felt as contented as a well-fed cat. It was bliss. For a week she had done nothing but purr with pleasure at the new turn in her relationship with William. What did it matter if he didn't love her? It seemed no more than an abstruse philosophical point when she lay in his arms at night, or when he looked at her in that certain way of his in the daytime and she knew he was remembering, just as she was, the delights of the passion that flared so easily between them.

Of course, it wouldn't always be like this. She knew that, but she wasn't going to think about it now. Soon William would be away all day working and she would have to pay more attention to Celine and her problems. And then there was Jennifer —

'If you screw up your face like that you'll get terrible wrinkles,' Celine broke in on her thoughts. 'Think pleasant thoughts if you want to be beautiful! I remember my mother saying that.'

'If she was anything like you she didn't have much to worry about!' Georgina remarked dryly.

Celine laughed. 'Well, she wasn't. She wasn't at all like me —I mean, she wasn't beautiful in any way. Her face was a jumble of features and her teeth were all crooked. But she was never without a man at her side. They all loved her, even Father, though she made no effort to be faithful to him. Beauty hasn't anything to do with it.'

To Georgina, this was heresy. 'Wait until you meet Jennifer,' she said on a sigh. 'She's not as lovely as you are, but she's well enough to have put me in the shade all my life.'

'Perhaps she has something else as well.
You
have. You're nice.'

Georgina was about to say that Jennifer was not nice, but she stopped herself in time. It wasn't fair to denigrate Jennifer behind her back, especially as she was going to stay with them for a visit. There was always the possibility that William would be right and she and Celine would take to one another and become friends. If that were true, it would be a pity if she were to spoil it.

'Niceness is rather dull,' she said instead. 'It would be rather fun to be a
femme fatale
for a week, or a day, and see what it felt like!'

Celine fluttered her lashes, a superior look on her face. 'You should know if anyone does! William doesn't hover round you because you're nice! I don't know how you did it, Georgie, but I'm awfully glad you did. He feels better about all women since you came along. He's much nicer to me even. I used to think he found me a drag all the time and, after a while, I couldn't say anything sensible to him at all.'

'Miss Campbell didn't help — '

'No,' Celine agreed, 'but someone like you would have coped with Miss Campbell long ago. You may wish you were beautiful, but you can't wish it half as much as I wish I were more forceful and determined. I admire you for that!'

Georgina was astonished. 'Nobody else does! I've had to live with the fact that I'm a bully for years now!'

'Since William labelled you as one?'

Georgina nodded. 'He still thinks I need watching. I don't mind as much as I did, but when Jennifer comes—
She
never lays down the law! She suggests things to people and, of course, they do whatever she wants them to.'

'Even William?'

'Especially William!'

William came out on to the verandah to join them, his chest bared to the sun. He was already the colour of mahogany, which made his eyes seem lighter and the golden lights in them more obvious.

'There's a letter for you,' he said to Georgina, and dropped it casually into her lap. 'From Jennifer.' He watched her pick it up and examine the envelope for herself. 'You don't have to check, it's just as it left her fair hand. I haven't steamed it open to find out what secrets you and she are keeping from me!'

'Good,' said Georgina. 'You're learning—though Jennifer never shares any of her secrets with me.' She waved the letter in the air, unread. 'Do you want to see for yourself?'

'If I want to read it, you won't keep it from me,' he smiled at her. He sat down on a chair and waited. 'Tell me what she says,' he commanded.

Georgina's eyes slid over her sister's large, spidery writing. Jennifer thought large writing denoted a generous nature and she made no effort to confine herself to more than a couple of words on every line. It meant that what Georgina could have written on a single page was spread over half a dozen, the lines tip-tilted and running into one another. It was large, but it was by no means easy to read.

'She's coming up from Colombo in her own chauffeur-driven car, which

Duncan has insisted on paying for. Naturally, he wants her to have the best because he's still very fond of her. She hopes she hasn't broken his heart as she knows what it's like to be parted from the one person in the world for her. Only Duncan is luckier than she, because she hasn't been stolen from him by another. It's doubly hard when someone one has loved and trusted all one's life stabs one in the back. Didn't Caesar say, "Et
tu, Brute?"
to his friend Brutus as he did the dirty deed? She knows just how he felt.'

William didn't move a muscle. Georgina looked at him over the top of the letter, wondering what he was thinking.

'She doesn't say exactly when she's arriving,' she went on, a nervous tremor in her voice that refused to be dismissed.

'I've never had much time for Caesar myself,' William said suddenly.

All Georgina's worst suspicions were aroused. He had to be trying to tell her something and she was too obtuse to know what it was! She thought hard about Julius Caesar, but all she knew about him didn't make him particularly lovable in her eyes either.

'Why not?' she asked.

'He played both ends against the middle. His wife had to be above suspicion to keep the Romans quiet at home while he went off and conquered Cleopatra to make himself master of Egypt.'

'He was a great man!' Georgina protested. 'One can't judge them by ordinary everyday standards!'

'What other standards would one use?' he asked reasonably. 'And, more to the point, when does the individual decide he's great enough to use these other standards?'

Georgina gave him a helpless look. 'I suppose he just knows. Besides, I've always heard it that he couldn't resist Cleopatra's exquisite beauty.

He probably couldn't help himself!'

'How very convenient,' William drawled. 'Would you allow such an excuse from me, Georgie Porgie?'

She might have to, she thought, when Jennifer arrived. 'I'd try to understand,' she said aloud.

He opened his eyes and her own widened at the gold-flash she saw in their depths. 'Don't expect me to be so broad-minded if you take off! I've got used to having you at my beck and call and that's the way I like it.'

Her heart jerked within her. 'But it might not always be enough,' she forced herself to say. 'I wasn't your first choice —I may not be your last.

She
may be somebody else!'

William smiled a self-satisfied grin. ‘If she is, don't expect to know anything about her. You won't get away from me as easily as that! You, I shall have and hold till death do us part, no matter what pleasant diversions crop up along the way!'

But Jennifer would make sure she knew! Jennifer would enjoy telling her the details of her conquest and, whatever William might say now, Georgina was as sure as her sister was that it would be Jennifer who would win.

William sat forward suddenly, making Georgina jump. ‘What mischief are you thinking up now, my sweet? I make my own decisions, Georgie Porgie, and I reserve the right to make most of yours for you too, so don't get carried away by your own sense of importance! I won't be bullied by you, and the only force of arms I recognise from you takes place in bed —and very nice too!' He stood up, pushing an errant lock of hair away from her face. ‘Won't you ever be content to allow that in me you've met your master?'

If only it were as simple as that! ‘I may still escape you,' she warned him.

The prospect didn't seem to worry him. ‘Do you want to?' he challenged her.

Sometimes she did. Sometimes she wanted passionately to get away from him, but she hadn't wanted to in the last few days, and she was ashamed that he should know it too.

‘I'm an ordinary healthy female,' she began. ‘Most women like to be mastered in bed.'

His smile looked to her eyes to be wolfish and not very kind. ‘We're not in bed now, Georgina, and I'm still your master!'

Celine blinked at them both and eased herself out of her chair, mumbling something about taking a walk across the tea gardens towards the bungalow where Stuart lived. ‘Atta girl, Georgina!' she added over her shoulder, giving the clenched fist salute as she went. ‘Give him all you've got!'

The colour swept up Georgina's face.
'Celine!'
she pleaded. ‘Don't go!'

‘I've already gone,' Celine answered. ‘I may be a bit lacking, but at least I know when I'm not wanted. See you later!'

Georgina retired into a sulky silence, but when she saw that it was going to take much more than that to remove William from the strategic position he had chosen, standing over her and, at the same time, preventing her from leaving her chair, she rushed into speech.

'Now look what you've done!' she attacked him. 'If she's going to visit Stuart, I ought to go with her. She's quite capable of allowing him all sorts of liberties — in fact, she'll probably demand that he does — ' She broke off, not quite knowing how to finish the sentence.

'Make love to her?' William ended it for her. 'Stuart will look after her better than you can, Georgie. Your place is here with me.'