Dishonourable Intent. Anne Mather
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God, it must be someone you know!’
‘No.’ She trembled. ‘I think he must have got into the apartment. There’s no other way we could think of to explain how that had happened.’
Will stiffened. ‘We?’
‘Yes, we.’ Francesca tried to compose herself. ‘Tom Radley. He’s a friend. He works at Teniko, too.’
Will nodded, aware that his reaction to the fact that she had a man friend wasn’t exactly dispassionate. Yet why shouldn’t she have an admirer? he asked himself. He hadn’t exactly lived the life of a monk since she’d left.
‘We are just friends,’ Francesca asserted now, and Will wondered if his expression had given him away.
‘Hey, that’s your affair,’ he said lightly, managing to sound almost indifferent. ‘I’m glad you’ve got some support. That helps a lot.’
‘No, it doesn’t.’ She gazed at him with tear-wet eyes, and he despised himself for thinking that she still looked good in spite of her distress. ‘Tom’s offered to move in, but I don’t want him to. We don’t have that kind of a relationship and I don’t want him to get the wrong idea.’
Will looked down at his-spread hands, aware that this was getting harder by the minute. For God’s sake, he thought, why had she come to him? If she imagined he might offer to move in with her, she was wrong.
‘The calls,’ he said quickly, desperate to distract himself from sensual images of what it had been like when he and Francesca had lived together. ‘Couldn’t they be traced?’
‘Oh, sure.’ Francesca moved her hand. ‘They were made from call boxes all over the city. There was never any pattern to them. He’s much too clever to get caught out like that.’
‘And the voice isn’t familiar?’
She shuddered. ‘No.’
‘And when you decided he’d been in your apartment...’ He paused. ‘I assume you changed all the locks?’
‘Yes.’
There was an exhausted note to her voice now, and, looking at her, he realised how tired she must be. If she’d done a day’s work and then driven up here, she must be absolutely worn out. He should let her get some sleep before continuing this inquisition. And yet...
‘You say you didn’t want to stay in the apartment,’ he persisted. ‘Yet you obviously stayed there after you thought he’d broken in.’ He bit his lip. ‘What happened tonight that so upset you? I know I sound as if I’m playing devil’s advrocate, but I just want to know why you felt you had to get away.’
Francesca expelled a trembling breath. ‘When I got home from work tonight, I found the bathroom window had been broken.’ She fought for control. ‘That was bad enough, but then—then the phone rang, just as I was examining the damage. It was him. The stalker.’ She shuddered. ‘He said—he said he was watching me. I—I asked him if he’d broken my window and be said that I shouldn’t bother to get it mended because he’d be back.’
FRANCESCA had never slept in one of the Abbey’s guest suites.
Even before she and Will were married, when she had stayed for several weeks at Lingard, she’d always slept with him—in his suite, in his bed. Of course, when their relationship had become intolerable, Will had moved into one of the other suites himself. But she had always occupied the principal apartments, and it was odd to find herself in unfamiliar surroundings now.
Not that they were unwelcome surroundings, she acknowledged wearily, sinking down onto the side of the canopied bed. At least here she didn’t constantly feel the urge to look over her shoulder, and she could go to sleep without being afraid of either phone calls or unwanted intruders.
She shivered.
It had been crazy to come here, though. In all honesty, she still didn’t know why she’d come to Will. Except that when she’d found the window broken, and then taken that awful call, she’d panicked. It was as if she’d reached a kind of breaking point herself, as if the knowledge that he could even see her in her own flat was the last straw. Until then, she’d regarded her apartment as a sanctuary. Despite the fear that he might have broken in, she’d had no proof. But suddenly she’d lost any sense of security. She doubted she’d ever feel the same about the place again.
When she’d first left Will, she’d been forced to live in a bed-sitter, and after the clean air and space she had found at the Abbey, the room, in a hostel off Edgware Road, had seemed dark and poky. If he’d come after her then, if he’d shown even the slightest hint that he still cared for her, she’d have gone back to him, willingly. She’d have swallowed her pride and returned to Yorkshire without a second’s hesitation.
But, of course, he hadn’t. Will had his pride, too. Her lips twisted. God, he’d been full of it. Still was, if she was honest enough to admit it. He might have sympathised with her dilemma tonight, but he didn’t really want her here.
Perhaps she should have accepted Clare’s invitation to stay with her. She lived just a few streets away from Francesca’s home in Harmsworth Gardens, and at least that would have enabled her to go to work tomorrow. As it was, she would have to think of a convincing excuse for her boss at Teniko. He hadn’t been particularly sympathetic when she’d told him of her problems before.
Still, tomorrow was Friday, and with a bit of luck she’d be feeling more herself by Monday morning. She knew she hadn’t been thinking too clearly when she’d begged Clare for the loan of her Mazda just hours ago. All she’d felt was an overpowering need to get away from London, and she’d come to Will because he was someone she could trust.
And that was an irony, too, she mused bitterly, remembering how little he’d trusted her when she’d walked out. Why had she come to him, when he’d always been so willing to think the worst of her? Why had she sought his protection before that of anyone else?
Maybe if she’d had close family of her own it would have been different, she reflected. But, like Will, she’d lost both her parents before she was old enough to leave school. She’d not been as young as Will when he’d lost his parents, but she’d had no fairy grandmother to come to her rescue. Just her mother’s elderly aunt, who’d considered caring for her orphaned niece a duty, but not a pleasure.
Francesca drew a heavy breath and pushed herself up from the mattress. The temptation was just to sit there and feel sorry for herself, but she ought to try and get some sleep. Will had said to relax, that they would talk again in the morning. But in spite of being bone-tired her mind wouldn’t let her rest.
She caught sight of her reflection in the mirror which topped a skirted dressing table and, moving nearer, she examined her features with a critical stare. Her eyes were puffy, and she smoothed the veined skin below them with unsteady fingers. She looked older than Will this evening, she thought disconsolately. He’d always used to say his two years’ seniority could have been ten.
The bag Watkins had brought up earlier was resting on a padded ottoman, and, unzipping the top, she pulled out her toilet bag and the nightshirt she wore to sleep in. Apart from these items, jeans, underwear and a couple of shirts comprised her whole wardrobe. There was little point in hanging them up. They wouldn’t take up an eighth of the space in the enormous clothes closet.
The adjoining bathroom was equally huge. Francesca washed and cleaned her teeth at the large porcelain handbasin, promising herself that she would use the clawfooted bath in the morning, when she didn’t feel so deathly weak. Her face looked pale and drawn, and she impatiently pulled the pins out of her hair so that it fell in crinkled disorder about her shoulders. At least it softened her profile, she thought, contenting herself with just threading her fingers through its thickness tonight.
She was sliding between the crisp linen sheets of the brass bed when there was a knock at