Impetuous Masquerade. Anne Mather
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o’clock this evening. This is my fourth visit, Miss Mallory, and this time I don’t intend to leave until I know the truth!’
Rhia was trembling very badly, but somehow she managed to sustain his angry glare. ‘I don’t care what she told you, Mr Frazer,’ she retorted tremulously. ‘I imagine she had her own reasons for telling you what she did. The fact remains, I am Rhia, not Valentina, and I wish you would stop behaving as if I’d committed some kind of crime!’
‘And haven’t you?’
‘No, damn you!’ Rhia caught her breath on a sob, the pain he was inflicting to her arm causing the blood to drain from it. ‘For God’s sake, let me go, can’t you? You’re taller, broader, and infinitely stronger than I am. Surely you’re not afraid I might overpower you!’
The man regarded her malevolently for a long moment, and then, with a faint trace of admiration twisting his dark features, he opened his fingers and stepped back, allowing her to massage her injured arm with jerky movements. ‘You’re very cool, Miss Mallory,’ he commented harshly. ‘I should have expected it. But after meeting your sister, I’m afraid I was disarmed.’
Disarmed! Rhia couldn’t imagine anyone who displayed a greater lack of such a weakness. But evidently Valentina had spoken to him, and succeeded in deceiving him. But why? What did she hope to gain by it? Surely she realised that by antagonising this man, she could only be making things more difficult for herself.
‘You’d better come in.’
Pushing past him, Rhia led the way into the living room. For a moment, he resisted her attempt to pass him, but then, with a wry inclination of his head he allowed her to continue, and Rhia turned on the lamps with a feeling of mild incredulity. This couldn’t be happening to her, she thought disbelievingly. But it was, and her unwelcome visitor’s bulk uncomfortably reduced the generous proportions of the familiar room.
Glancing behind her to ensure herself of his whereabouts, Rhia emptied the contents of her handbag on to the dropleaf table in the window. Then, after finding what she was looking for, she held out several articles for his inspection: her banker’s card, her cheque book, and not least, her driving licence.
‘I think these will clarify the situation,’ she declared, her voice breaking in spite of the iron determination she was putting on herself. ‘And if any further evidence is required, I’m sure Simon—that is, the young man I was out with this evening—I’m sure he would willingly——’
She couldn’t go on. It had all been too much for her. With a feeling of ignominy, she felt the hot tears over-spilling her eyes, sliding down her cheeks in weak betrayal, and she quickly turned her back on him as she scrubbed her knuckles over her eyes.
If she had expected her tears to persuade him, she was wrong. As she stood there, struggling to control herself, she heard him flicking over the documents she had given him, in no apparent hurry to offer his apologies.
‘Yes,’ he said at last, ‘I’m sure these are genuine. But why shouldn’t I suspect their deliverer? If I was going to pretend to be someone else, I’d make pretty damn sure I had documentation, too.’
‘Oh, you’re impossible!’ Rhia spun round helplessly, her breakdown made all the more humiliating by reddened eyes and a drip at the end of her nose. ‘Why won’t you believe me? Why would I lie?’
‘Why would your sister lie?’
Rhia bent her head, rubbing her nose disconsolately. ‘You tell me.’
There was silence for a few pregnant seconds, and then Jared Frazer moved, walking past her to the table and depositing the articles she had given him with the rest of her belongings. Rhia flinched away from him as he passed her, but he didn’t touch her. After he had accomplished his mission, he returned to his position by the door, and when she looked up he was regarding her with something less than hostility in his brooding gaze.
In spite of their differences, Rhia could not deny that he was a disturbing man, disturbing both in his manner and his appearance. The hooded eyes with their heavy lids, that had raked her trembling defiance previously, were only part of his dark attraction. Set above a narrow intelligent face, with high cheekbones and a prominent nose, they only hinted at the sensuality that was evident in every line of his thin-lipped mouth. She had never seen Glyn, but if he was anything like his uncle she could quite see why Valentina had found him so attractive. Even the dark lounge suit he was wearing fitted his lean muscular body with unerring elegance, accentuating the narrowness of his hips and the powerful strength of his legs.
Yet, meeting his eyes, Rhia knew an uneasy sense of foreboding. It was strange, but now that the hardness of aggression was being erased from his features, she felt more—not less—anxiety. Why had he come here? What did he want? And why hadn’t Glyn’s parents made the trip?
‘Okay,’ he said, straightening from the indolent stance he had adopted, pushing back the lick of straight black hair that had tumbled across his forehead. ‘Suppose I accept what you say: I guess that means it was Valentina I spoke to earlier.’
Rhia moved her head in a positive gesture.
‘So—where is she?’
Rhia caught her lower lip between her teeth. ‘At—at work, I suppose.’
‘I assume you mean the hospital where she’s a student nurse?’
‘Naturally.’
‘No.’ He shook his head, folding his arms across the broad expanse of his chest, and Rhia’s anxiety kindled into a hard core of apprehension.
‘What do you mean, no?’
‘Where do you think I’ve been this evening? Apart from a bar.’
Rhia frowned. ‘But she must be there. She told me she was on duty at eight o’clock.’
His eyes narrowed. ‘You’ve seen her?’
‘Well—yes.’ Rhia coloured. ‘But it was at lunchtime. That—that was when I learned about what had happened——’ She broke off uncertainly. ‘How—how is Glyn?’
‘Still in a coma,’ said Jared Frazer flatly. ‘The doctors say it may be hours or days before he comes out of it. There’s nothing anybody can do until they know whether he’s suffered any brain damage.’
‘Oh, no!’ Rhia felt sick.
‘Oh, yes.’ Jared Frazer was relentless. ‘And I mean to find out how my nephew, who was a tolerably good driver, should have had the misfortune to wrap his automobile round a concrete post for no reason.’
Rhia moved her head. ‘What—what did they tell you?’
‘Who? The doctors, or the police?’
‘The—police.’
‘They’re not happy with their investigations either,’ he replied, his eyes intimidatingly intent. ‘They think someone else may have been with him. Your sister, perhaps. They know she was with him earlier in the evening.’
Rhia could not meet his eyes. ‘I—I wish I could help you.’
‘So do I,’ he averred grimly. ‘It would help to find your sister. Are you sure you have no idea where she might be?’
‘No.’ Rhia could be positive about that at least. ‘I—at lunchtime when I left her I understood she was going back to the hospital to see Glyn. I can’t imagine where else she would go.’
Jared Frazer pulled a wry face. ‘You forget—she was here, wasn’t she? I spoke to her at—oh, I guess it must have been about two-thirty.’
‘Yes.’ Rhia tried to think. ‘But you’ve been to St Mary’s since then and she’s not there.’
‘That’s right.’
Rhia linked her unsteady fingers together. ‘Then I don’t know where she