A Sudden Engagement & the Sicilian's Surprise Wife Read online

  He made her sound like a child, Kirsty thought tiredly, and yet only such a short time before he had been all too prepared to consider her a woman.…

  ‘Well, perhaps next time you’ll think before you act,’ he was saying, much like a schoolteacher to a backward pupil, and fresh humiliation seared her. What must he think of her?

  ‘Here!’

  He passed her the old dressing gown she had discarded earlier, and while she struggled into it with trembling fingers, Kirsty was aware of him moving about, dressing swiftly.

  ‘Are you staying at the hotel?’

  All she could manage was a nod.

  ‘Okay, I’ll walk you back to your room. You look as though you could do with a stiff drink first,’ Drew added unflatteringly as he switched on the bedside lamp flooding the room with soft colour.

  ‘Bit off more than you bargained for, didn’t you? Just out of interest, how far were you prepared to let me go before you finally stopped me, or were you simply looking on it as a good way of broadening your experience?’

  Kirsty turned away, but not before he had seen the betraying sheen of tears in her eyes. There was a small explosion of sound and then suddenly his hands were on her shoulders, his voice harsh as he demanded bitingly, ‘You little fool, don’t you realise how close you came to being raped? Has no one ever told you just how damned hard it is for a man to stop when he’s as aroused as you’d got me? The experience might be lacking, but the equipment’s there all right,’ he added sardonically, watching the colour run up under her skin. ‘But next time you feel like experimenting pick on someone your own size.’

  ‘I wasn’t,’ Kirsty managed on a dignified whisper. ‘It was your idea to… to.…’

  ‘Make love to you?’ Drew supplied. ‘So it was, but it takes two, you realise, and the kind of response I was getting from you.…’ He broke off suddenly and looked at her. ‘It was the first time, wasn’t it?’ he asked expressionlessly, watching her with cool grey eyes that seemed to see right inside her head and make it impossible for her to lie.

  Her, ‘Yes,’ sounded hunted and strangled, and Kirsty couldn’t meet his eyes, sure that she would read amused contempt there for her inexperience.

  ‘And at a guess you forgot what you were doing in my arms in the first place.’ He seemed to be speaking more to himself than her, and Kirsty was surprised to hear him add dryly, ‘Quite a salutary experience—for both of us. You’re a very desirable young lady, Kirsty Stannard, a very dynamic package, but in future, unless you want to lose that innocence very quickly, stop trying to pretend you’re something you aren’t. Have you any idea how close I came to taking you?’ he asked softly, with no mercy for the quick flood of colour under her skin.

  ‘Come on,’ he said at last. ‘I’ll walk you to your room, and order a drink from the kitchens for you—something to help you sleep.’

  ‘I’m not a child!’ Kirsty told him indignantly. ‘I.…’

  ‘Save it,’ she was advised with dry impatience, followed by a curt, ‘What the devil are your parents thinking about, letting a baby like you loose on the streets?’

  ‘I’m not a baby,’ Kirsty stormed back at him. ‘I’m twenty!’

  ‘A very great age,’ Drew taunted. ‘But I’m talking about experience, not age, little girl, and when it comes to the former.…’

  ‘I’m simply not in the same league as the Beverley Travers of this world,’ Kirsty supplied with a bitterness that surprised her.

  ‘Nowhere near it,’ Drew assured her mockingly. ‘Now come on, let’s get you tucked up in your little bed, before you go and drive some other unsuspecting male half crazy!’

  Those minutes in his arms when he had wanted her so much that he had been tense with the effort on containing it might never have been. All at once she had been relegated to the role of child, and irrationally she resented it.

  In the end Drew left her outside her room, but long after he had gone Kirsty lay awake reliving those emotions she had experienced in his arms, shivering at the knowledge that it had taken him to arouse them. A pure fluke, she assured herself, nothing more, and thank God she would never have to set eyes on him again. She didn’t think she could endure the humiliation. Bad enough if he had actually ‘raped’ her, as he described it, but in some ways worse to have been found out and rejected on the grounds of her innocence; to have fallen short of his requirements in a woman and be dismissed merely as a foolish child.

  She had heard other people describing virginity as a ‘turn-off, but this was the first time she had come across concrete evidence of the fact. Drew had desired her, she knew that, but the moment he realised that she was still a virgin his desire had gone. Kirsty writhed in a torment of mortified chagrin; somehow the swift death of his desire made her feel a failure as a woman, a freak almost. What was the matter with her? she asked herself. She ought to be thanking her lucky stars. Self-disgust rose up inside her. What on earth had happened to her belief that physical desire was nothing without love? Why had she responded in the first place? Had perhaps fear released an adrenalin into her blood which had led to that warm, yielding tide of desire? That must be the explanation. Feeling happier, Kirsty closed her eyes. If she was honest she was forced to admit that she had been foolish enough to go to Drew Chalmers’ suite, but having done so and endured the after-effects, all she wanted to do now was to put the whole affair behind her, and forget about the incident completely. She could only thank her lucky stars that her path and Drew’s were hardly likely to cross again!

  CHAPTER THREE

  WAS she dreaming, Kirsty wondered, waiting in the wings for her turn to read, or was she actually here in Yorkshire, ready to go on stage for her first rehearsal as Hero, in Much Ado About Nothing?

  She pinched herself just to make sure, reassured by the tingling pain in her arm. So much had happened in such a short period of time; first the failure of her previous play—not exactly unexpected—and then the phone call from her agent, Eve, in London telling her that she was to present herself in Ousebridge in Yorkshire for an audition for the part of Hero.

  What had totally floored them both was that the director and producer Simon Bailey had specifically asked for her. He had heard that she might make an excellent Hero from a friend who had seen her on stage, he had told Kirsty with a smile when she had commented a little breathlessly on her good fortune in being invited to audition. Parts like Hero did not come the way of struggling young actresses very often, especially with such prestigious companies as the Ousebridge Players.

  ‘That was excellent, Kirsty,’ Simon approved as she came off stage. ‘You’re beginning to get the idea. Like I said, I want to get right away from the hackneyed image of Hero, and instil something a little different.’

  Her head in the clouds, Kirsty hurried down to the communal dressing room, her mind already on the letter she would write to her parents when she returned to her hotel.

  They had been thrilled for her, of course, and her mother had even gone so far as to loan Kirsty her precious Mini for the duration of her stay in Yorkshire.

  ‘Don’t forget about the party tomorrow, will you, Kirsty?’ Cherry Rivers, the A.S.M., called as she hurried past the open door. ‘All the rest of the cast will be there!’

  Simon had already invited her to the get-together party he and his wife were holding for the cast of Much Ado. As he had explained to Kirsty when he initially auditioned her, the Ousebridge had only a very small nucleus of permanent actors, preferring to audition afresh for each play, and because of their excellent reputation they were normally able to obtain some of the more glittering stars of the theatrical world to play their leading roles. For Much Ado, they were lucky enough to have a world-famous actress to play Beatrice. Kirsty had seen her once in the West End, and was rather overwhelmed at the thought of appearing in the same production as such a well-known personality.

  She had already met the small nucleus of permanent cast, one of whom was Simon Bailey’s wife. She, she explained chee
rfully to Kirsty, was unable to take part in the current production owing to the fact that she was expecting their second child, which was one of the reasons they needed Kirsty.

  ‘She had a miscarriage eighteen months ago,’ Cherry had told Kirsty later, ‘and because of that Simon is insisting she takes things easy this time—I don’t think she minds, though, she’s always said she prefers being a wife and mother to the stage. I can see you doing the same thing,’ she had confounded Kirsty by telling her. ‘You don’t have that hungry, driving look one always associates with the ones that make it to the top. Don’t look so upset,’ she had consoled her. ‘Absolute dedication, heart, soul and body, isn’t always a good thing.’

  Kirsty had liked Cherry right from the start and she had proved a fund of information about the Ousebridge Players and the people connected with them. And at least someone had thought her acting ability worthy of note and recommendation, even if Drew Chalmers did not. Drew Chalmers! Why on earth had she had to think about him? She loathed the man, but he had developed a disconcerting habit of stealing into her mind when she was least expecting it. Had she been less honest with herself she might have been able to delude herself into believing that what had happened in his suite had come unpleasantly close to rape, but her scrupulous inborn honesty wouldn’t let her off so lightly. However unwittingly and briefly, she had participated.

  Her fingers curled into her palms as she left the theatre and headed for her Mini, mentally reliving the turbulence of those moments when Drew had touched her body; the excitingly sensual roughness of his body hair against her skin; the skilled possession of his kiss.

  ‘No!’ She shook her head vigorously, as though by doing so she could dislodge the persistent memories, but they clung as tenaciously as steel sutured cobwebs.

  She had been at Ousebridge just over a week now—long enough for her to have put Drew Chalmers completely out of her mind, but instead.…

  Just let him wait, she thought wrathfully, waiting for an opportunity to join the stream of traffic along the High Street, just let him wait; she would show him!

  In the short space of time it took to drive from the theatre to the quiet hotel where she was staying she became lost in a delightful daydream composed of glowing tributes to her interpretation of Hero; somehow—and the exact accomplishment of it was still very hazy—Drew Chalmers would be in the forefront of this worshipping crowd, full of apologies for previously misjudging her; and ready to tell the world of his folly in doing so.

  She came down to earth with a bump when another irate motorist blew his horn at her and she realised that he was flashing her to let her go. How crazy could she get? she asked herself wryly as she drove on. The day Drew Chalmers had a good word to say about her would never dawn.

  Her evenings had developed into a similar pattern since her arrival in Yorkshire. After dinner she either retired to the hotel lounge and watched television and read, or she went to her room and studied her part. Tonight she had decided to do the latter, but she had barely done little more than read through the first two acts before she started to wonder who could have recommended her in glowing enough terms to Simon Bailey to make him audition her.

  That she had been fantastically lucky was in no doubt. She knew from Cherry that she was the youngest and most inexperienced member of the cast; and although she knew that parts were obtained by word of mouth references, she hadn’t thought she numbered anyone amongst her acquaintances influential enough to get her considered for such a prestigious company.

  She put the typed sheets on one side, and opened her wardrobe on impulse, wondering what on earth she was going to wear to the party.

  The Baileys had invited the entire cast, plus several local dignitaries; financiers and friends.

  ‘You’ll enjoy it,’ Cherry had assured her when it was first mentioned. ‘It’s a regular thing, and like you I was terrified the first time I was invited to one when I joined the company two years ago. You sometimes get a certain amount of bitching,’ she had added, ‘but then of course that’s the theatre for you!’

  * * *

  In the end Kirsty elected to wear a silk jersey dress in a rich cinnamon shade which had been a gift from Chelsea. Her aunt had brought it for herself and then decided that the colour did nothing for her, so Kirsty had inherited it.

  It was far more sophisticated than the clothes she normally wore, but she was glad she had chosen it when the front door of the Baileys’ substantial foursquare Georgian house opened to her knock and she saw how glamorously the other female guests were dressed.

  ‘You made it—I’m so glad!’ Helen Bailey said warmly as she took her coat and led the way up an attractive flight of stairs to what was obviously a spare bedroom, gesturing to Kirsty to make use of the dressing table and full-length mirror as she hung her coat in the spacious cupboard. ‘Simon tells me he’s got high hopes of your Hero,’ she added with a smile, breaking off to excuse herself as the doorbell pealed again. ‘Can you find your own way down?’ she asked hesitantly. ‘Or.…’

  ‘I’ll be fine,’ Kirsty assured her, not wanting to admit that without her hostess’s supportive presence she felt more like hiding herself away in the bedroom than going back downstairs. She hadn’t felt so alien and unsure of herself since secondary school. Her initial euphoric delight at getting the role had worn off during the night and she had woken up this morning seized with the conviction that she simply wasn’t up to the role of Hero, and never, ever would be.

  There was a crowd of people milling about in the hall when she went downstairs, and she was just hesitating on the stairs when Cherry suddenly pounced on her, her eyebrows rising a little as she studied her slowly.

  ‘Wow, that’s some dress,’ she pronounced at last. ‘And not exactly chain-store either!’

  It was impossible for Kirsty to be offended by her frank manner, and she explained lightly that it had been given to her.

  ‘Lucky you—which reminds me, another piece of luck for you. Simon asked me to enquire about lodgings for you, and I think I’ve found you some, but come and meet the others first, we’ll talk about it later.’

  She plunged into the crowd, leaving Kirsty no option but to follow her, hoping that she had indeed found her somewhere to stay. Pleasant though the hotel was, it was proving a drain on her resources that she could ill afford.

  She was introduced to so many people in such quick succession that she was convinced she would never remember their names. However, she did have an excellent memory for faces, and she just prayed that when she did meet them again at rehearsals they would reintroduce themselves.

  ‘Come and meet Clive Richmond, who’s playing Borachio,’ Cherry instructed. ‘But be warned—he’s something of a flirt.’

  ‘Who, me?’ Clive expostulated in mock-hurt accents. ‘Don’t listen to her, Kirsty, it’s all lies!’

  They exchanged cheerful banter for several minutes, the sensation of being the only outsider at the party gradually leaving her as Kirsty joined in the conversation, and then allowed Cherry to detach her from Clive in order to introduce her to some of the others.

  ‘Exhausting, but necessary,’ she whispered to Kirsty at one point. ‘At least when you go home you’ll be able to say you’ve spoken to everyone.… Oh yes, and before I forget—about your lodgings. They’re with Mrs Cummings. She’s a widow—lives alone in a large old semi about a mile away from the theatre. She’s just had the upstairs converted into two self-contained bedsits. One of them she’s going to let to her niece who works in York, but she’s offered to let you have the other if you want it. The rent is very reasonable. She doesn’t provide meals, but I’ve seen the flat—there’s a marvellous purpose-built kitchen affair that can be partitioned off from the rest of the room. Shall I tell her you’re interested?’

  ‘Please. It sounds great!’

  ‘Well, now that that’s settled and you’ve met almost everyone, I suggest we give our feet a rest and find something to eat and drink,’ Cherry suggested
practically. ‘Helen always puts on a superb spread. She and Simon make a good couple, don’t they?’

  Agreeing, Kirsty followed her through the crowd. Cherry seemed to know her way round, and half an hour later, her plate filled with all manner of tempting bites, Kirsty sank gratefully into a chair next to Cherry, listening to her chattering about the other guests.

  It was apparent that she knew most of them quite well; her comments were shrewd and funny, but never deliberately malicious. Only when Clive was mentioned did her voice change slightly. A flirt, she had called him, and although she would bear her warning in mind, Kirsty resolved to reserve judgment until she knew him a little better, because initially she had quite liked him.

  ‘Here comes our leading lady and her husband,’ Cherry announced suddenly. ‘She’s just finished filming a new series for television—Simon was jolly lucky to get her.’

  Peering over her shoulder, Kirsty caught a glimpse of the famous actress through the crowd surrounding her.

  ‘I’ve heard she’s isn’t all sweetness and light with the lower orders,’ Cherry warned her. ‘Oh no—and just look who she’s brought with her!’ she groaned suddenly as the crowd parted.

  Craning her neck, Kirsty did, paling as she recognised the beautiful mask-like features of Beverley Travers. Of all the bad luck!

  ‘They went to school together,’ Cherry chattered on, blithely oblivious to Kirsty’s consternation. ‘Bosom friends and all that, although you can bet your bottom dollar it isn’t friendship that’s brought her here tonight.’ She stressed the word ‘friendship’, and grimaced slightly, but Kirsty was too dismayed by Beverley Travers’ unexpected appearance to question her further. Later she was to wish she had done, but by then it was too late. Far too late.

  The Baileys’ house was a comfortable size, and the drawing room carpet had been rolled back so that people could dance. An attractive teenager Cherry referred to as ‘Jim—he helps out after school and is a fantastic scenery shifter,’ seemed to be in charge of the hi-fi. Several couples were already dancing when Clive approached Kirsty and asked her to dance with him. Cherry was already dancing and Kirsty had no hesitation in accepting his invitation. She suspected that Cherry was quite right when she described him as a ‘flirt’ and moreover that she had been tactfully advising her of that fact, nevertheless he was good company, attractive and good fun, and she enjoyed the fifteen minutes or so she spent with him, and returned to her chair and her plate of food slightly breathless, warm colour tinging her clear skin.