No Just Cause Read online

  “You know,” she said, “we thought James was never going to marry.” And then her glance swung round to James, who was talking to someone else, and she put a gloved hand up over her mouth while she whispered: “At least, we were rather terrified he was going to marry someone else!”

  “Oh! ... Oh, really?” Carole stammered.

  Lady Bream continued to whisper.

  “She’s here tonight, but you mustn’t mind. We none of us wanted her to get him! He’s so basically nice, you know ... and rich, of course! We’ve always had the fear that he would be married for his money,” and this time she looked rather shrewdly at Carole.

  The dinner itself was enough to shake the nerves of any young woman unaccustomed to dining in such circles. And in addition Carole could not get away from the knowledge that everyone stared at her whenever the opportunity presented itself ... men, impeccably turned out and almost all French, were, without exception, charming ... But the women—or at least some of them—had hard eyes, and the fact that they felt a certain amount of amazement over James’s choice of a future life-partner showed in those eyes.

  While James was standing beside her, giving her unconscious if not entirely conscious support, it was not so bad, for, one and all, they had smiles and roguish looks for him, and if one or two of them wagged a finger as much as to say they were surprised he took no notice. He didn’t even attempt to explain away Carole. He simply introduced her as his fiancée.

  Chantal St. Clair was one of the last to congratulate them before they went in to dinner. She was wearing her favourite black, and she looked superb. When Carole saw the way her lustrous eyes sought out James’s and held them she experienced an extraordinary feeling deep down at the heart of her ... and even she herself recognised it for a queer pang of envy.

  Chantal, even if James was not marrying her, had had some sort of an affair with him that had given her confidence where he was concerned. She was perfectly well aware that she had quite a considerable effect on him. He could look back at her with uninformative and rather hard dark blue eyes—faintly challenging at the same time, as if he was not entirely certain how she would react—but they were not indifferent eyes. No man could look on Chantal and remain utterly indifferent. He must admire her, or so Carol was reasonably certain. Such beauty and poise and elegance had to be admired. And then, whatever her secret thoughts, she was capable of smiling charmingly even in the moment of defeat.

  She held out her hand to Carole and greeted her with the warmth she would accord to an old and well-tried friend.

  “I am lucky,” she said. “I have already met you twice, Miss Sterne ... or may it be Carole?” She made a face, as if quarrelling with any thought of formality. “After all, I have known James for so long...” She shot him a sideways look, which did nothing to alter the expression of his own eyes. “How long is it, James, chéri? So many years that when I begin to count them up I feel almost old!”

  She made an expressive gesture with her lovely bare shoulders.

  James’s lips seemed to tighten. “If we substitute months for years I think we shall be approaching nearer the truth,” he replied. “I think it is fourteen or fifteen ... A year and a half, shall we say!”

  She sent him a languorous look under her devastating eyelashes.

  “But in a year and a half much can happen,” she reminded him. “Much water, as you say in England, can flow under the bridge.”

  “Agreed,” he answered rather curtly.

  Marty, who had been watching her brother a trifle anxiously, spoke up with false brightness.

  “Goodness,” she said, “I can’t imagine knowing a man—one man!—for a year and a half! I’m afraid I consider that variety is the spice of life.”

  And at this one or two of the older women laughed. “That reveals that you really are very young, Martha, my dear, and your brother is wise to keep you at school,” one remarked. “In another year,” with maternal French complacence, “you will be older and wiser, and anxious, I’m sure, to settle down.”

  “Perhaps,” Marty replied, but she sounded extremely dubious. And then she slipped her hand inside Carole’s arm and whispered: “One marriage in the family is enough—for the moment! We’ve got to get you safely extricated from this mess before I think of settling down.”

  They went in to dinner, and Carole found that she and James were placed next to one another, which was somewhat of a relief because he was able to utter discreet warnings in her ear from time to time. He gave her a slight nudge occasionally, to prevent her making unwise statements or attempting to answer awkward questions that were put to her, and although she was not so much grateful as rendered a trifle apprehensive by this she realised that what he was trying to do above everything else was save the situation for himself. With a garrulous matron on one side of him, and Chantal’s lovely, liquid, faintly amused eyes contemplating him from the opposite end of the table throughout the length of time that the elaborate meal lasted, he was certainly in no position to relax.

  When a general toast was drunk to the newly-engaged couple Chantal actually lifted her glass a little higher than the rest, and above the rim of it the dark depths of her eyes seemed to hold a sparkling challenge. James, looking rather pale as if the effort not to meet that challenge was great, spoke jerkily to Carole who had remained seated at his side at the table.

  “You’re doing fine,” he told her. “But please try and look as if you’re enjoying all this.”

  “I’m not,” she informed him without moving her lips.

  He put out his hand and covered one of hers that was resting on the table. The entire company—with the exception of Chantal—smiled indulgently as he patted it, and then possessed himself of it and tucked it firmly inside his arm.

  “Now smile,” he commanded, in the same low tone.

  Carole smiled, feeling her fingers crushed by the fierce, compelling pressure of his ... which told her a lot about him. Told her just how important this piece of deception was to him.

  After dinner everyone dispersed into groups, and over coffee and liqueurs there was much talking and laughter. Lady Bream detached Carole from one of the smaller groups—already some of the French matrons were lifting their eyebrows a little, as if there was little about her, apart from her pleasing looks, that struck them as likely to offer an explanation of the reason why James Pentallon had asked her to marry him; and when they thought how many attractive girls there were in Paris ... well, it all struck them as rather peculiar. Lady Bream, who was determined to find out something about Carole, took her aside—in fact, into her own private sitting-room, where the lights were burning softly, and flower-prints on the walls and satin-damask covers on the chairs and elegant eighteenth-century couches lent it all a delightfully feminine and intimate look. Lady Bream patted the cushions of one of the couches and invited Carole to sit beside her, and although she was far too nice to put her through a deliberate catechism she did ask a number of leading questions which the girl found it a not entirely simple matter to answer.

  Such questions as the one about her parentage, who had brought her up, etc., were simple enough. And the fact that she was a close friend of Marty’s seemed to impress Lady Bream. But she was not so impressed by the admission that Carole was a kind of pupil teacher at Miss Dove’s, and that until recently she seemed to have known literally nothing about James.

  Carole strove hard to remember all the things Marty had cautioned her about ... ‘You mustn’t say you haven’t known James for long,’ she had warned. But somehow it slipped out ... the truth that she and James had known one another for about a week. They had been seeing one another almost constantly during that week, it was true, but that did not alter the fact that a week in which to get to know a man and decide to marry him is a very short time.

  And for a man of James’s experience and cautious disposition—apparentlynotoriouslycautious—it seemed, somehow, an even shorter time. Or that was the way in which it struck Lady Bream.

/>   “However, I expect the truth of the matter is that you fell in love at first sight?” Sir Darrel’s wife suggested comfortably, at last. She beamed pleasantly at Carole. “And that isn’t really strange, is it? It does happen to quite a lot of people, especially in this modern age. Of course, years ago we were more nervous of marrying in haste and repenting at leisure. That sort of thing.”

  “Oh, but James and I don’t intend to marry ... at least, not for a long time,” Carole assured her, adding the last bit hastily.

  She could not be certain whether it was her own impression, or whether Lady Bream really did look distinctly relieved.

  “Well, I’m sure that’s a good thing,” she said. “A very sensible thing! After all, if you know so little about one another ... James is not the easiest man in the world to get to know intimately, I’ve always thought. My husband is very fond of him, and so am I, naturally ... but that doesn’t mean we always understand everything he does. And when he marries his wife will have quite a responsible position. Have you seen Ferne Abbey?” she asked. “I believe it’s a very beautiful house ... very beautiful and very old. You’ll have to become a first-class hostess and do a lot of entertaining. Will you like that?”

  “I haven’t seen Ferne Abbey,” Carole admitted, “and I shall do my best—when the time comes—not to let James down.”

  “Of course!” Lady Bream beamed all over her pleasant, carefully made-up face, and then patted the gauze-covered knee of the girl beside her. “And you are extraordinarily pretty, you know, my dear,” she told her. “You mustn’t think I’m being unreasonably critical because James has got himself engaged ... and to such a thoroughly natural and charming girl!” By which Carole clearly understood that her hostess did not look upon her as in the same class as Chantal St. Clair when it came to female looks. “I’ve always thought that what James needs is a helpful and attractive wife to assist his career, and so forth ... not a maddening beauty who will demand all his time and attention and perhaps cut him off from some of the things he used to do.”

  “Such as?” Carole asked, with a curious, mature dignity, because she strongly suspected that there was only one person in James’s world who could answer faithfully to such a description as that, and that she was the one person Lady Bream had in mind.

  “Well, my dear—” Her knee was patted again, a little awkwardly, for Lady Bream was suddenly a trifle confused by the levelness and the directness of the large greenish-grey eyes that were, all at once, subjecting her to a scrutiny—“I don’t actually want to commit myself, but since you ask we did all think ... that is to say, most of us thought that Madame St. Clair ... Well, she is a widow, you know, and James has seen such a lot of her in the past, and men seem to go over like ninepins when they see her for the first time...”

  “But James has known her for eighteen months,” Carole remarked clearly.

  “Yes, I know, my dear, but—she wasn’t a widow when they first met! Her husband, as a matter of fact, was a distant connection of my own husband’s, and I’m afraid he got involved in an accident and was killed. That was about nine months ago. James has been seeing a lot of her ... but of course I shouldn’t say that!”

  “You think that Madame St. Clair would make an excellent hostess for Ferne Abbey?” Carole asked, staring at the tips of her delicately manicured fingers as if they suddenly interested her extremely.

  Lady Bream was plainly startled.

  “Why, no, my dear,” she replied, “that isn’t what I think. As a matter of fact—”

  The door opened, and Marty stood there, looking slightly agitated.

  “Sorry to barge in, Lady Bream,” she apologised to her hostess, “but I was looking for Carole, and I had an idea I might find her here.” She looked across the room almost urgently at Carole. “Have you any idea where James is?” she asked. “I know this is your engagement-party, and I thought—I do think...”

  Lady Bream looked up alertly.

  “He could be in the library,” she suggested. “With Darrel.”

  “If he is in the library,” Marty replied composedly, “he’s not with Sir Darrel. Sir Darrel is talking to the Spanish Ambassador in the salon. But I have an idea he’s with someone...”

  Once again she looked urgently at her friend.

  “If I were you, Carole,” she suggested, “I’d pop downstairs to the library and find out why you’re being neglected.” Her deep blue eyes that were so like her brother’s, and so beautiful that they sometimes took Carole’s breath away, were insistent. They were a little hard, too. “And I wouldn’t waste any time!”

  “Yes, do go and find out what has happened to James, dear,” Lady Bream murmured, and made room for Marty on the couch beside her. The two women looked at one another rather hard and closely as Carole left the room.

  CHAPTER EIGHT

  CAROLE had no idea where to find the library, but she encountered a maid in one of the downstairs corridors, and the girl took her to it. Carole dismissed the maid and prepared to tap on the door. Then something told her just to push open the door and walk in, and she did it before some other internal voice whispered to her to do nothing of the kind.

  As soon as she had entered the room she was sorry she had not waited for that second and more cautious voice. The room was vast and lavishly furnished—not so much like an English library as an ornate, masculine retreat; and behind the enormous desk with its bowl of flowers and glittering, gold-stoppered inkwells two people were standing. And they were standing so close to one another that there was no doubt about it ... they were actually in one another’s arms.

  Carole, who felt like the most appalling intruder, was unable to back out hastily because the door had closed behind her, and all she could do was press her slim shape up against the door and look upon the spectacle of the lovers with widened, apologetic eyes. In a moment she would have recovered from her surprise to turn, wrench open the door and bound out of the room—as if, for some reason, all the demons in hell were behind her—and after that she would have simply raced away along the corridor and attempted to forget what she had seen. But James Pentallon’s voice stopped her.

  He stopped her with a touch of peremptoriness.

  “Come back, Carole!” He released the lovely figure in black, and she regarded Carole with smouldering eyes. “Why are you running away?”

  He went forward and caught her by the wrist, and drew her under the flood of light cast by the overhead lamp. Carole’s hair seemed literally to catch fire in the brilliance, but her face—small, oval, and for the first time he realised, vulnerable—had had all the colour driven out of it, and her eyes were huge and resentful. He gave her a little shake.

  “Why do you look like that? Because you catch Madame St. Clair and me together it is not the end of the world! It is not the end of your world, anyway ... I was simply saying goodbye to her.”

  “I see,” Carole breathed rather than uttered the words.

  His strong, lean fingers were encircling her wrist rather cruelly, and he gave her another shake.

  “We are old friends ... old friends, do you understand? Naturally we couldn’t simply part without—without—”

  “Expressing a few regrets that we couldn’t bring ourselves to marry one another after all!” Chantal St. Clair stepped forward, also into the patch of light that flooded across the Aubusson carpet, and her slim, black figure was straight and erect, her lovely, camellia-pale face a smooth mask of resentment. “Whatever this charade is you are enacting you might as well face up to it, mademoiselle, that it is only a charade,” she enunciated clearly. She even slipped a hand inside James’s arm and regarded him with a mild air of triumph. “James and I are lovers. We have been lovers almost since we first met!”

  “That is not true,” James denied harshly.

  She elevated an enchanting eyebrow.

  “Well, since my husband died. Ever since I was free!” She patted Pentallon caressingly on the cheek. “James is a very proper man,” she told t
he English girl, “and because I was not free he contented himself with admiring me for the first few months of our acquaintance. My husband had nothing to complain of, because James is very English ... oh, very English!” She put her head on one side, rested it against his shoulder and looked up at him alluringly. “Is that not so, my darling?” she murmured. “You and I were so violently attracted, and yet we remained apart ... and even when I became as free as air we could not make up our minds to marry! Why is that, you ask?” glancing carelessly at Carole. “Because James is not a marrying man!”

  “Be quiet,” James ordered her, with a touch of sternness. “Leave this to me!”

  He removed her clinging hands, and drew well away from her, and then he turned his attention once more to Carole. But for the first time her expression betrayed revulsion, and she backed hastily as he stepped towards her.

  “Please!” she gasped. “You don’t have to explain to me, and in any case I don’t want to hear what you have to say—”

  “But you will hear it,” James assured her, speaking as if between his teeth. “I haven’t brought you here tonight to announce our engagement to have you behave as if you’d been brought up in a nunnery—”

  “Miss Dove’s establishment is a form of a nunnery,” Chantal interpolated, opening her gold purse handbag and beginning carefully to touch up her face. “You should have realised that, darling, when you picked on this silly little one. She has had no experience whatsoever of men, and naturally she thinks your behaviour strange. As a matter of fact, if I had just become betrothed to you I would think it strange, too! Unless I was given to understand that I would be well paid for my trouble, and could run free and meet my own charming boy-friends as soon as you felt secure enough to write me out a cheque. Is that what you propose to do to this little one?” glancing up from her mirror and waving her gold lipstick aloft. “Reward her with a cheque so that she will not have to teach any more in that silly school, and perhaps buy her a few more new clothes?”