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He could, at this stage, be horrified by the implications.
Then he touched the side of her face with a slow- moving finger and his eyes were soft.
'I'll give you lunch at Glades. One o'clock.'
Cleo had finished dressing and was half-way down the stairs when Meg came out of the kitchen.
'There's a phone call for you, madam. Luke Slade.'
'Thanks, Meg, I'll take it in the study.'
Cleo responded warmly to the housekeeper's smile. Meg's devotion to Jude had lapped over on her, and the older woman asked, 'Shall I bring your breakfast through, madam? How about a nice boiled egg—free- range and fresh?' she tempted.
Cleo shook her head, admitting, 'I finished off the toast Jude couldn't eat, thanks,' and was aware of Meg's cluck of disapproval as she went to take that call, wondering why Luke had bothered to contact her. He certainly wouldn't be enquiring about her health—they had never got on very well together.
'Cleo?' His voice sounded harsh and tinny. 'Thank God you're back. I was afraid you and Jude might have skived off for yet another week. How soon can you get here?'
His urgency worried her and she asked quickly, 'What's wrong? Not Uncle John?'
But Luke snapped, 'He's fine. Just get here. Fenton's been round, making unpleasant demands. We can't discuss it on the phone. Just get here.'
She arrived at the Slade Securities head office in Eastcheap still in a state of shock, but as she dismissed Thornwood and the Rolls and walked across the pavement her thoughts began to unlock themselves, tumbling out all over her brain.
In the exquisite delight of recognising her love for Jude, in the joy they had discovered together during those long golden days and jewelled nights, Robert Fenton, and her reason for needing a husband in the first place, had been pushed from her mind, because garbage like that had no place in the ecstatic, the delicate, the passionate act of falling in love.
She had told Fenton they would be away for one week. But Jude had taken two. And Fenton hadn't been able to wait. So his greed had taken him to Luke, to spread his poison, make his threats, turn the screw.
Her hands were wet with sweat as she took the lift to Luke's office. His secretary told her to go right in, her eyes puzzled, sensing something was wrong. Luke was pacing the floor and he shot over to her, slammed the door closed behind her and grated, 'What the hell kind of mess do you think you've got us into? His narrow face was flushed and his hand shook as he took a bottle from the hospitality cupboard and sloshed two inches of Scotch into a glass. 'He walked in here on Thursday with his oily threats and I've been going spare ever since.' He took a long gulp of the neat spirit and told her, 'He said you'd promised to hand over twenty-five thousand pounds last week, for withholding certain information. By Thursday he'd decided you were reneging so he came to me.'
'I'm sorry you had to get mixed up in this.' Cleo slumped weakly on to a chair. 'I forgot. We didn't get back to London until late yesterday afternoon.'
'Sorry?' Luke bared his teeth in a mirthless grimace, his eyes incredulous.
'And how the hell can you forget a thing like that? Or do you have so many blackmailing threats hanging over you that this one just slipped your mind?
It wouldn't surprise me,' he jeered, 'you always did seem too good to be true!'
She wanted to walk out there and then, but couldn't afford the luxury, so she asked, tight-lipped, 'Is this as far as it's gone? Just trying to get the money out of you?'
'He'd be lucky!' His mouth twisted. 'And isn't it far enough? Can you imagine what the kind of publicity he's threatening to put around would do to the company—stuff like that can affect confidence. I can't afford to have that happen. In the state we're in, it could finish us.' He sat down heavily. 'If the money isn't in his hands by tomorrow he threatened to go to Father for it, and if that failed he's seeing some newspaper creep- as bent as he is, no doubt. I would have kicked him out of the door, but I knew he had to be telling the truth about what happened between you, otherwise you'd never have agreed to pay up in the first place.'
'He told you everything?' Cleo felt sick and she almost asked for a drink when Luke got up to pour himself another Scotch. But she needed a clear head to contact her bank and ask them to have the money ready for her to collect in the morning, to arrange a meeting place with Fenton.
Luke sat down again, disgust on his face. 'About your affair, the debts he ran up trying to give you a good time, your promise to marry him, the night you spent together at some out of the way hotel just before you gave him the boot.'
And Cleo said tiredly, 'It wasn't like that. We did date, but it never got heavy and I soon woke up to the fact that all he wanted from me was a share in the Slade Millions.'
'So why did you agree to pay up?' Luke sneered. 'If your relationship was that innocent he wouldn't have had a thing to hold over you. You've got to be as guilty as hell. Not that it bothers me,' he added spitefully. 'I couldn't care less if you have to pay him to hold his tongue for the rest of your life. But I don't go a bundle on being personally threatened by a creep like Fenton.
Anyway,' his eyes glittered triumphantly, 'if your relationship was so pure, what about the night you spent together at that Red Lion place? He said he could prove you'd shared a room as man and wife.'
'And so he could,' Cleo agreed wearily. 'We went for a drive in the country—he'd asked me to marry him, secretly, and I turned him down because by that time I knew he was primarily interested in the money I'd eventually inherit. He seemed to take my refusal well, said he hoped we could still be friends. God, I was green!' Her brows knitted over cloudy grey eyes. 'I'd already realised he was a bit of a con-man, but I didn't know he could be evil. I don't know why I'm explaining all this to you, but he engineered the whole Red Lion episode. He booked us in as man and wife and when I found out it was too late to do anything about it. But I spent the night in an armchair. Fenton and I have never been lovers--'
'Yet you're willing to pay out that kind of money!'
Cleo saw the sneering disbelief in his eyes and she said grittily, 'I can't prove we weren't lovers. He can prove we shared a hotel room for a night. I can't disprove his lies—that I said I'd marry him, made him spend money on me he couldn't afford then walked away when he got into debt. And I've found--'
her eyes lashed him scornfully '—that most people prefer to believe the worst of others.'
