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‘Philippa… my poor girl.’
He leaned forward and, recognising that he was about to kiss her, Philippa stepped back.
‘I brought you these,’ she heard Frank telling her as he walked into the hallway and handed her the flowers. He smelled very strongly of aftershave, Philippa noticed distastefully as she took the lilies.
‘I was just on my way to bed, Frank,’ she told him coolly.
‘Yes, I know I’m calling at a late hour… Look, why don’t we make ourselves a little bit more comfortable—unless you’d prefer me to come upstairs with you and tuck you up?’
Philippa didn’t bother to make any response, leading the way instead into the cold drawing-room.
He sat down on one of the plain cream sofas and patted the seat next to him, draping his arm along the back of the sofa as he told her, ‘Come and sit down here next to me and then we’ll talk.’
Talk? What was there to talk about? Philippa wondered, deliberately avoiding the space next to him on the sofa and choosing the security of a chair instead.
‘You know how much I’ve always admired you, Philippa,’ he told her as she sat down. ‘In fact, if I’m honest, I always envied old Andrew being married to you. You’re a very beautiful woman—an intelligent woman as well, I suspect.’
He paused and then smiled at her.
‘I don’t like to think of such a pretty woman missing out on life’s treats. Pretty women should have pretty things… enjoy themselves…’
Philippa started to speak, but he held up his hand, silencing her as he continued, ‘When Andrew was alive he provided those things for you, but Andrew’s dead now.’ He got up off the settee and came towards her while Philippa stiffened in dislike and disbelief.
‘I’m a very rich man, Philippa, a very rich man who appreciates pretty things… pretty women. Women like you shouldn’t have to worry about money. And there’s no reason why you should. I think you know what I’m talking about, my dear. There’s a very nice little mews house close by the cathedral in town. You’d be very comfortable there. I’d like to show it to you but, of course, like any sensible man, I’m sure you’ll understand that I like to ensure I’m investing my money wisely, that it’s buying me… exactly what I want.’
Philippa could feel the anger pouring through her in a red-hot tide. Did he really honestly think that she would actually consider selling herself to him,
leasing him the use of her body in return for his little mews house? Her fury was so intense that it literally rendered her speechless.
‘Why don’t we go upstairs now, and talk the whole thing through?’ she heard him saying smoothly as he came towards her.
Another moment and he would be touching her. Philippa’s flesh crawled in anticipatory revulsion, galvanising her into action. She stood up, distancing herself from him as she said quietly, ‘I’ve got a much better idea…’
She could see the expectant sexual glisten of his eyes, hear the gloating note in his voice, and her stomach heaved.
‘Oh, and what might that be?’
‘Why don’t I pick up the phone and ring your wife and tell her what you’ve just said to me?’ she suggested levelly, firmly retaining eye-contact with him as the meaning of what she was saying sank in.
He was a man who could, she suspected, be a bully and physically violent, and she could sense now his desire to take hold of her and hurt her.
Without taking her eyes off him, she told him coldly, ‘Please leave—now!’
‘If you think that by doing this you’re going to up your price then you’ve mistaken your man,’ she heard him telling her, his voice thickening with anger as he added brutally, ‘You might be a pretty woman, Philippa, but I should be careful if I were you. After all, you’re not so young any more, and that sharp tongue of yours will drive more men away than it will attract: sexual domination might turn some men on; verbal domination certainly doesn’t. If I were you I’d be careful not to place too high a value on myself; you might price yourself out of the market and, when you do, don’t bother to come knocking on my door,’ he told her sneeringly, adding venomously, ‘Come to think of it, you probably wouldn’t have been much use in bed anyway. I’ll lay odds I’d get a better fuck off a girl on the streets; better and cheaper.’
There was more in the same vein, all of which Philippa heard out in silence.
Later, when he had finally gone and she had bolted the door behind him, she leaned against it, shaking, not so much with fear as with nausea and anger.
Previously she had looked upon Belinda Jarvis with a mixture of irritation and contempt; now she felt profoundly sorry for her.
As she walked past the open drawing-room door she automatically went to close it and then recoiled as she caught the smell of the aftershave which still hung on the cold air.
When she unlocked and pushed open the French windows, the icy breeze brought her skin out in goosebumps but she scarcely noticed the cold.
Upstairs in the bathroom, she scrubbed her skin so hard with the loofah that it physically burned. No doubt the incident had had its funny side, she acknowledged, but right now she wasn’t in the mood to see it.
He had really genuinely believed that she would accept his proposition. Was that how people… men… saw her… as a commodity to be bought and sold, a possession? She had heard apocryphal tales of divorced and widowed women being approached by the hitherto irreproachably faithful spouses of their woman friends and their ex-husbands’ male friends with offers of sex, but for Frank Jarvis to assume…
