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Shock kept her silent for a moment, then she said huskily, ‘I don’t know what you’re doing here, but will you please leave?’
‘When I’ve said what I’ve got to say.’ Clare had an attractive voice, warm and low-pitched.
‘Nothing that I want to hear.’
‘I wouldn’t be too sure,’ Clare retorted, then stopped. She said ruefully. ‘Oh, hell, this isn’t what I intended at all. Although I can’t altogether blame you for wanting to throw me out.’ She bit her lip. ‘I’ve been having pretty venomous thoughts about you, too.’
‘How fascinating,’ Amanda said icily. ‘You seduce my fiancé, and have an affair with my husband, and it’s all my fault.’
Clare sighed. ‘How little you know.’ She sat down, crossing shapely legs. ‘First things first, Mrs Templeton. I am not having and never have had an affair with Malory. Not that I didn’t want to, you understand. That was the problem. I—I was desperate for Malory to take me to bed, but he just doesn’t sleep around. And I got the strongest impression that he was only taking me out as camouflage, anyway, because the girl he really wanted was unavailable. Rather damaging to the ego, that.’
She hesitated. ‘So when that other bastard came sniffing around, I suppose I was fair game.’ She gave Amanda a level look. ‘You think I seduced Nigel—dragged him into bed?’ She shook her head. ‘It was the other way round. He besieged me. Flowers, little gifts, telephone calls, lifts, lunches. You name it, he provided it. And I was flattered. Who wouldn’t have been?’ She gave a half-smile. ‘The expression on your face tells me the treatment sounds familiar.’
‘Yes.’ It was humiliating to acknowledge it, but Nigel had courted her in much the same way.
‘He should have his line patented,’ Clare said contemptuously. ‘Because that’s all it is—a line. A means to an end. A way of getting at Malory, of whom he’s always been pathologically jealous.’
She threw back her head, and the blonde hair swung. ‘He told me all about it—after you ran away that day, and he was getting dressed to follow you. He’d always known how to get women into bed, he said, and he’d seduced the first girlfriend Malory had ever brought home to meet his family. It became just like a game, he said. To see a woman that Malory wanted, and move in on her—squeeze him out. Humiliate him. Malory might have been their father’s favourite, he told me, but he’d take care that he was always second-best where women were concerned. I was just one in a long line of his successes. He actually laughed about it. And he said, “I can’t wait for him to get married. Then I’ll really go into action.“ ‘
Amanda said, ‘Don’t—oh, God, don’t! No one could be like that.’
Clare said flatly, ‘I didn’t believe it either, until I saw Malory a couple of days later, and realised he knew exactly what had been going on—and that I hadn’t a prayer any more where he was concerned.’ She shuddered. ‘That was what hurt, not Nigel—I only had myself to blame for that. But the fact that I’d lost Malory through my own blind, egotistical stupidity. If I’d turned Nigel down—if you’d married him—then Malory might have loved me eventually. And I’d have made him happy. Which is more than you’re doing.’
Amanda flinched. ‘How dare you!’
‘Oh, I dare.’ Clare’s eyes were steely. ‘I met him on the plane coming back from New York—I’d been there on a modelling assignment. He looked terrible. I—I asked a few idle questions about Nigel, and watched his reaction.’ She took a breath. ‘My God, I hated you. I saw you at the airport, although Malory didn’t. I saw you running away again, and I was glad. I thought, It serves her right, the silly little bitch. She’s got the only man I’ll ever want, and she still hankers after his worthless brother.’
‘Then why are you here, telling me all this?’
Clare looked down at her nails. ‘Because I’ve seen Nigel—spoken to him. I was in this wine bar, and he was there. He’d been drinking, and I asked him, straight out, what he’d been up to. He looked smug, and said he’d fixed things so that Malory would never trust you again. He went rambling on about some production of Othello he’d seen years before, and the value of circumstantial evidence.’ She sent Amanda a narrow-eyed look. ‘I didn’t know what the hell he was talking about, but clearly you do.’
Amanda flushed. ‘Yes.’
