PENNY JORDAN - Some Sort Of Spell

‘Why didn’t someone come and wake me?’

‘Because I told them not to!’

Her eyes swivelled to meet Elliott’s, expressing their total disbelief.

‘Isn’t it time you went home, Elliott?’ she demanded frigidly, clutching at the frayed remnants of her dignity. What on earth was he doing here? He must have stayed the night.

‘Haven’t you heard? This is my home… at least for the next three months. Lucilla invited me to move in when she heard about the problems I’m having with the contractors.’

Dimly Beatrice remembered Lucilla mentioning something about the work that was being done on Elliott’s London apartment, but she had said nothing about inviting him to move in with them.

Anger burst into life inside her, and she longed to shriek that he was not staying, and that he could leave right away, but she knew that in an outright quarrel she had no hope of outwitting him. Elliott never lost his temper and was a formidable foe, as she well remembered from her teenage years.

‘Thoughtful of her to suggest I stay here, wasn’t it?’ he continued with a cool effrontery that took her breath away.

He must have heard her indrawn gasp—there could be no other explanation for the gleam she suddenly saw in his eyes as he drawled, ‘Yes, I knew you’d think so, Beatrice.’

‘Stay if you want,’ she said ungraciously. ‘There’s enough room.’ That wasn’t at all what she had intended to say, but it was too late to recall the words now.

The grey gleam deepened, making her suddenly feel acutely vulnerable for some reason.

‘Most gracious of you.’

‘Ah, but you haven’t heard the house rules yet, has he, Bea?’ Benedict teased, blue eyes dancing with amusement. ‘No reading under the bedclothes, Elliott—it’s bad for your eyes… and for your spots—depending on what you’re reading,’ he added incorrigibly, making Beatrice flush scarlet as she remembered her long-ago words to her brother when she had caught him sneaking pin-up magazines into his room.

‘No raiding the fridge at night. No drinking parties. No smoking—of any kind. And definitely no girls in your room after lights out. Have you told him that bit yet, Bea?’ Benedict was grinning irrepressibly at her.

‘Ben,’ she began repressively, but Elliott seemed unmoved by her younger brother’s disclosures and merely said affably, ‘Since I don’t date girls , I don’t think I’m going to have any problems.’

He stood up, brushing toast crumbs off his immaculate pin-striped suit. This morning he looked every inch the successful businessman that he was and Beatrice reflected darkly that it spoke volumes for the Machiavellian character she had always suspected he possessed that neither of the twins so much as tried to get a rise out of him over his sober attire. Had any of the men she had infrequently dated appeared at the house thus dressed they would have been baited almost to the point of insanity. Like their parents before them, the twins displayed a cheerful irreverence towards anything even remotely Establishment. But it was as though Elliott was protected by his own invisible radar, and, what was more, they seemed to know it because they treated Elliott with… with respect, she acknowledged a little resentfully, recalling how often she had wished they might accord her that same virtue.

‘Just as well you’re not starting the new job this morning, Bea,’ commented Benedict, lazily helping himself generously to the butter and plastering it on his toast. Without looking up from his task he added, ‘Did you know that Bea’s got herself a job, Elliott? Working for a famous composer, would you believe, or at least he will become a famous composer one day. Isn’t that what Uncle Peter says, Bea?’

Her muscles still felt stiff from the pain of her migraine, and for some reason it hurt to force the calm smile with which she acknowledged her brother’s comments.

She was conscious of Elliott watching her with the same unblinking intensity that a cat might watch a mouse. Already she was tensing her body against one of his mocking remarks, but when she nerved herself to look directly at him she saw that he had switched his attention from her to Benedict and, what was more, that the look the two of them were exchanging had for some reason brought a bright gleam of triumph to her brother’s eyes.

That made her frown. As far as she knew, Elliott had always got on reasonably well with the rest of her family. She was the only one of them who disliked him.

‘I suppose you know that Lucilla is leaving here to move in with her latest boyfriend,’ Sebastian commented, and, as Elliott’s attention switched from one twin to the other, Beatrice found she was expelling a faint sigh of relief.

She was a coward, she acknowledged wryly as she got up to make some fresh coffee; definitely one of the ‘peace at any price’ brigade, but why not? Not everyone could be a moral crusader, not just ready but eager to spring into battle at the slightest provocation. The twins, especially Benedict, thrived on conflict of any kind, and there was nothing Ben loved more than a stimulating argument, as she had good cause to know.

‘She is over twenty-one,’ Elliott pointed out.

‘Well over,’ Miranda added sotto voce to Elliott’s calm remark, earning herself a frown from Beatrice, and the lift of one faintly querying eyebrow from Elliott himself.

‘Even so, I don’t think her proposed move is a viable one,’ Elliott continued calmly, ‘and I’ve told her as much. Of course she’s a free agent, but…’

‘But you control her purse strings,’ Benedict put in a little crudely, adding, with a wicked gleam in his eyes, ‘and sanctions could be imposed…’

Beatrice tensed, but Elliott refused to rise to the bait.

‘Indeed they can,’ he agreed, ‘but sanctions, if indeed there are to be any, are a subject only for discussion between the concerned parties, if you follow me, Benedict. Which puts me in mind of another matter,’ he continued, before Benedict could make any comment. He glanced at his watch. ‘I don’t have time to discuss it now, which is perhaps fortunate. I’m going to the city if anyone wants a lift. I’ll be leaving in exactly fifteen minutes.’

Miranda stood up quickly, gulping down her coffee. This morning her black hair was arranged in a spiky halo around her face. Her lipstick was white, and she had stencilled a floral design around and beneath one eye.

Although she hated to admit it, Beatrice observed that the overall effect was unarguably attractive, but then Miranda would look good in a sack, and make-upless.

‘Yes, please, I’d love a lift, Elliott.’ She smiled winningly at him, the smile of a girl who had no doubt of her own attractions. ‘Could you drop me at Covent Garden? I want to browse round the market stalls. I need some antique lace…” Her smile switched suddenly to a frown. ‘Oh God, I’d forgotten. I’m going out tonight and I was going to wear… Bea, will you be an angel and wash and iron my black dress for me? I think it’s on my chair, or it might be on the floor.’ She frowned as she tried to concentrate, and, knowing her sister’s untidiness, Beatrice did not for one moment doubt that she was having difficulty in visualising exactly where she had dropped the obviously now all-important garment.

‘I’m afraid Beatrice won’t be able to do that for you, Miranda,’ Elliott said pleasantly, without taking his eyes from the newspaper he was scrutinising.

He spoke quietly, but it was as though he had shouted out loud, as five pairs of eyes mirroring different degrees of shocked disbelief turned in his direction.

Miranda was the first to recover.

‘Why?’ she demanded baldly.

‘Because tonight your sister is going out, and she’ll be too busy washing and ironing her own dress.’

Miranda gaped at him. ‘Beatrice going out! But she never goes out,’ she claimed with admirable disregard for the truth.

‘Never?’ One dark eyebrow rose in amusement. ‘I suspect that’s an exaggeration, but I’ll let it pass. I can see you’re suffering from shock,’ he added with avuncular kindness.

‘You never said anything about having a date.’ Miranda switched her attack, fixing hurt eyes on Beatrice’s blank face. ‘Who are you going out with?’

‘Me,’ Elliott interrupted calmly. ‘Not that it’s really any of your concern, my sweet selfish child, and since, as I’ve already pointed out, I shall require her to wash and iron her own party dress, it thus follows that she won’t have time to do yours. Do it yourself, mm, Mirry?’ he suggested, smiling at her. ‘It won’t hurt you.’

Beatrice wasn’t sure which held her the most transfixed, his outrageous comment about taking her out, or the effect of that singularly sweet smile which had been directed at her sister, but which was having the oddest effect on her own senses.

Quickly pulling herself together, she opened her mouth to tell him in no uncertain terms that they most definitely did not have a date, when he strolled over to her, leaned down, and before she could stop him placed a brief kiss against her parted lips.

When she wrenched away from him, he apologised insincerely. ‘Ah, obviously my mistake. I thought you wanted me to kiss you, Bea! Goodbye. Don’t worry about it,’ he added with kindly indulgence. ‘It’s just an automatic reflex, that’s all.’

As he sauntered off through the kitchen door, he called back over his shoulder, ‘Ten minutes, Mirry, otherwise I’m going without you.’

For a moment the kitchen fairly hummed with the intensity of the silence, and then Benedict looked speculatively at Beatrice and said thoughtfully, ‘I wonder why he’s taking you out, Bea. I wouldn’t have thought you were his type at all.’

Beatrice already knew she wasn’t. Elliott’s taste normally ran to long-legged model-like creatures with haughty expressions and rather county-type backgrounds, but that didn’t make her brother’s comment any less painful to bear.

Before she could say anything Sebastian added appreciatively, ‘I like his style, Bea… kissing you like that. Mind you, you did rather goggle at him. I wonder who he’s in the habit of kissing goodbye after breakfast. He’s rather a fastidious soul, our Elliott. As far as I know he’s never had a live-in companion, has he?’

‘I expect he normally sleeps over at their place,’ Benedict responded. ‘It would be much more economical that way, and you know how our Elliott feels about saving money.’

If she hadn’t been so ruffled and upset Beatrice would have reminded her brother that he was being more than a little unfair. Elliott might not splash his money about in the theatrical fashion of their late parents, but he was far from mean, and always gave her brothers and sisters extremely generous gifts of money for birthdays and Christmas.

He never gave her anything, though. He probably felt, if indeed he gave any thought to the matter at all, that being adult she was beyond the age of meriting gifts of any sort. Not that she would have accepted money from him even if he had chosen to give it, but last Christmas at the family party they always had on Boxing Day both Mirry and Lucilla had sported expensive designer dresses bought out of the generous cheques given to them by Elliott. She had worn the old black velvet she had had for years—her one and only ‘formal’ outfit.

Stubbornly she reflected that, whatever Elliott’s purpose in announcing that they were going out tonight, she was not going to go with him, and she would tell him so, tonight, when she hoped they wouldn’t have an interested audience.