That Kind Of Man

‘Do I?’

‘You know you do. You always have done.’

‘You need someone to say no to you, Abby. You’ve had a whole lifetime of people spoiling you, giving you exactly what you want.’

‘No,’ she corrected. ‘People giving me what they wanted me to have. It isn’t the same thing at all.’

Was that understanding which momentarily glimmered in the verdant depths of his eyes? On an impulse she placed her hand on his forearm. ‘Thank you for coming today,’ she told him honestly, because right at that moment he seemed the only solid, familiar shape in her quicksand-shifting world. ‘I appreciate it. Really, I do.’

He nodded as she let her arm fall but, far from looking gratified at receiving possibly the first compliment she had ever paid him, his face was grim and unyielding. ‘Don’t speak too soon, sweetheart,’ he said ominously, turning the door handle and pushing it open.

And Orlando’s friends were suddenly flocking around them, like vultures at a carcass, before Abigail had a chance to ask him exactly what he meant.

In Ireland the post-funeral party was known as a wake, though Abigail had often wondered why, since, judging from the facial expressions of most of the people here today, they looked about as unawake as she could imagine. In fact, a few of them looked just about ready to pass out.

She did what little mingling was necessary, but the effort it took must have shown on her face, for Nick soon came to stand beside her; he frowned, and then dipped his dark head to say in an undertone, ‘Why don’t you sit down? Take the weight off your feet.’

She didn’t know why she found it so difficult to follow suggestions when they were made by Nick—but she did. She always had done. And yet what he said made sense. Come on, Abby, she reasoned with herself, stop beating yourself up.

‘Okay.’ She nodded, and sat down stiffly in one of the high-backed chairs, forcing herself to sip from a glass of champagne, but pushing aside the untasted smoked salmon sandwiches on the place beside her, which were already curling up at the edges.

She drank the whole glass down, thinking that it might make her feel better, but by the end of it she felt resoundingly and head-achingly sober, though everyone else was well away, quaffing like mad at the vintage brand which Orlando had always preferred as though it were going out of fashion.

Nick had, in effect, she thought gratefully, now taken on the role of host. Abigail had barely been able to string two sentences together since they had returned—to find the party in full swing.

‘Do you want me to get rid of them?’ he asked her softly as they listened to one of Orlando’s buddies from drama school telling an outrageous story about her dead husband.

‘Soon,’ she answered.

Nick winced as the teller reached the predictably lewd and lascivious punchline, which was greeted with raucous laughter. ‘Doesn’t that kind of talk about your husband bother you?’ he asked her curiously.

Oh, what little he knew! Abigail shook her head. ‘Very little bothers me these days,’ she answered calmly, thanking a benevolent God that Orlando’s elderly parents, living in Spain because it was a kinder climate for people with chest problems, had been considered too frail and in too much shock to attend their son’s funeral.

‘Some of these people have come a long way to be here today, Nick,’ she explained quietly as she met his bemused stare. ‘Let them have their fill of food and drink. I need never see any of them again.’

He raised dark, quizzical eyebrows. ‘That bad, huh?’

She nodded her head reluctantly, the thick hair feeling hot and heavy against her neck. ‘That bad. So let them feel free.’

And they felt free, all right. The trouble was that they seemed like bottomless pits where the alcohol was concerned. Abigail was seriously concerned that, any minute now, someone would completely disgrace themselves. I really ought to go and ask the caterers to start serving coffee, she thought tiredly, unable to summon up the energy to move as she watched the guests group and regroup, dark dramatic figures, swaying more and more as each second passed.

Jemima, the dark, elfin-looking creature, with stray feathers from the feather boa sticking tantalisingly to her scarlet lips, was behaving quite outrageously—even for a member of Orlando’s entourage.

She made a beeline for Nick as soon as she spotted him, and then tried to drape herself all over him.

Abigail observed him with wry amusement as he politely attempted to keep her at arm’s length. His body language spoke volumes! Surely even Jemima must be able to sense that he was not in the least bit interested in her?

Apparently not. Jemima let a wing of raven hair fall provocatively over one half of her face, and looked up at Nick with huge dark eyes, blurred by alcohol. ‘Are you Abigail’s lover?’ she slurred.

Abigail held her breath as she waited for his reaction. There had been plenty of women in his life. He was a man of the world, and, naturally, she imagined that he must be terribly liberal and unshockable. Well, he certainly looked shocked now. Shocked and outraged! Abigail was amazed.

‘I beg your pardon?’ he queried icily.

Jemima clearly had a thick skin. ‘I just sh-shaid,’ she mumbled. ‘Are you getting it on? With Abigail?’

Suddenly the room went completely still. Curious, debauched-looking faces were turned with avid interest towards the tall man in the elegant dark suit.

Not a flicker of emotion stirred the breathtakingly handsome features, and yet his face was somehow all the more threatening for its complete lack of expression. Abigail thought that it was like looking at a cold, glittering mask of a man’s face.

‘Abigail buried her husband today,’ Nick told Jemima with frosty disdain. ‘And even if you don’t have a breath of decency in your body, then at least you might show her a little respect.’

His eyes became stormy, and Abigail saw that those strong, capable hands had clenched into fists beside the powerful shafts of his thighs. Quickly she looked away again.

‘Perhaps you would like to apologise to her before you leave?’ he suggested stonily.

‘Apologise?’ Jemima’s voice was shrill and she shot Abigail a malicious stare. ‘Apologise for what? For stating the truth? Come on, darling—everyone knows that Abigail and Orlando had a very open marriage. In the truest sense of the word,’ she finished, with a suggestive little pursing of her big, glossy lips.

For a moment Abigail met Nick’s appalled eyes over the top of Jemima’s head. She saw the bleak, disbelieving question written there, before his mouth thinned with distaste and he said, quite firmly, ‘The party’s over, folks, I’m afraid. And I’d like you all to leave.’

Jemima was still staring at Abigail, but the spite which was spitting from her eyes had now evolved into pure jealousy. ‘Sure we’ll leave,’ she drawled. ‘And we wish you all the luck in the world—you’ll need it! Orlando always said that going to bed with Abigail was like sleeping with an ice-cube!’

Abigail started as though she had been stung.

Like a child trying desperately not to cry, she crammed her fist into her mouth, as if to halt the bitter words of denial. She wanted to move, to run, to hide, to scream, but she felt powerless and heavy, as though the blood in her veins had turned to stone. She was trapped. Paralysed with fear. She made a tiny cry at the back of her throat, like that of a wounded animal, and she saw, from his look of fury, that Nick had heard the pitiful little sound.

‘Get out of here!’ he snarled, and the anger on his face subdued every person present. He took a slow, menacing step towards Jemima, who was staring up at him in horror, as if unused to the full brunt of a truly masculine rage.

‘Yes, you,’ he emphasised to Jemima in disgust, before turning to face the rest of them. ‘And all you others! You greedy, grasping pathetic bunch of parasites! You can take your nasty little stories and your freeloading ways and your sordid little lives and get out of here. Now!’

The strangely subdued gathering needed no second bidding. Glasses were hastily put down and they began to scuttle out, like children chastised by the headmaster.

It took about five minutes for the room to empty, leaving only the priest and two white-aproned waitresses, who stood looking up at Nick with a kind of nervous respect. The priest hastily said a polite farewell and left.

‘Did you mean for us to go, too, sir?’ one of the waitresses asked tentatively.

And Abigail then witnessed the most astonishing transformation.

Nick turned to the two women with a wide, apologetic smile and a rueful shake of his dark head. ‘No, of course I didn’t mean for you to go, too,’ he said. ‘And I’m sorry if you thought I did. I just thought that things had gone quite far enough—’

‘Oh, they had, sir!’ piped up the other. ‘They had! And you did absolutely right to say what you did! We was just saying in the kitchen—never heard language like it in our lives! Especially at a funeral! Absolutely disgusting!’

Nick glanced over at Abigail, who was still sitting motionless on the stiff-backed chair. ‘I just didn’t want Mrs Howard distressed any more—’

And suddenly Abigail could bear it no longer. Was Nick an actor, just like Orlando? Able to switch his emotions on and off at will, like a tap? One minute ejecting forty people from a room by the sheer force of his will and the next oozing so much charm that he had two middle-aged women positively eating out of his hand.

Jumping out of the chair, she stumbled towards the door. The older of the two waitresses tried to halt her.

‘Miss—’

The careworn arm she placed on Abigail’s arm was comforting and, Abigail supposed, reassuring, too. But she was still too disturbed to do anything other than shake it off distractedly. ‘Let me go,’ she pleaded, on a harsh gasp which seemed to be torn from somewhere deep inside her. ‘Please! Let me go!’

‘It’s all right,’ she heard Nick tell them, in a clipped and decisive voice. ‘Mrs Howard will be fine. Please let her go.’

CHAPTER THREE

ABIGAIL ran out of the room and directly up the staircase which rose from the inner hall, her laboured breathing sounding loud and distorted in the almost eerie silence which had settled on the house.

She did not go to hers and Orlando’s bedroom; she had not slept there for months.

But it was a magnificent room, overlooking the house’s greatest glory—its eighteenth-century garden—and Abigail had half thought that she might move back in, once the policeman had told her that Orlando was never coming home again.

But now she knew that nothing would ever entice her to sleep in that room again.

Instead, she made her way to the East Room, whose curtains were drawn almost shut, leaving only a chink in the heavy brocade, giving the bedroom a gloomy half-light which suited her mood perfectly.

With a sense of relief, she kicked off the spindly high-heeled shoes, unbuttoned her black jacket and lay down on the wide four-poster bed, staring sightlessly up at the ceiling.

In the distance she could hear the faint chink of china and glass being clattered, and supposed that the waitresses were clearing away the debris from the food.

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