Chapter Nine
The morning sped by in a whirlwind of packing and last-minute decisions. Lauren instructed the purser’s office to throw her wine-stained costumes overboard, or dispose of them in any other way that suited them. She carefully packed the survivors, and then unpacked them and offered them to the models and the three dancers. When Dani and Nella had each chosen a favorite—Nella wanted the cloak, for some reason—Lauren sent the rest to the Stranges’ stateroom. She knew that Violet would seize upon the bronze silk with true delight.
Then there was their own packing to do. She had to help the models, as she had expected. Vails had to be set aside for the stewards and stewardesses who had been so tireless in securing their comfort.
Then came the moment when Lauren had to tell her models that she wasn’t going to be staying at the Bristol with them. To her surprise and chagrin, she found that both of them had expected some such development. They reassured her that they would manage very nicely alone. Lauren, subdued by so much worldliness, handed them their return-flight tickets.
Dani confiscated them at once. “I’ll look after these,” she declared. Nella nodded happily.
Then Lauren told them of the car and driver that Mike was putting at their disposal. “Just be ready when the driver comes for you on Sunday,” she warned. “I wouldn’t want you to be left behind.” She glanced at them with concern. She was so used to managing things for them that she didn’t quite picture them coping on their own. “Have you enough cash for your meals and extras?”
“Yes, Mother.” Dani grinned. Lauren was reminded of Mike’s comment. She apologized for acting like a mother hen, and the models forgave her.
They decided to eat breakfast in the dining room with the troupe, and the meal became a pleasant leave-taking. Lauren was hoping that she would never have to encounter Herbert again, but he was waiting for her outside the Tables of the World restaurant. He didn’t seem guilty or embarrassed. She decided to be civilized.
“Well, Lauren, you were lucky,” was his charming opening gambit. “Even winning a consolation prize.”
There was little to say in answer to such a backhanded compliment. “Thank you,” she said dryly.
“How are you going to handle the return trip?” he went on.
“It’s all arranged,” Lauren told him.
“Well, have a good time in London,” Herbert taunted. “I wouldn’t want to have to ride herd on those two cows.”
Lauren turned away without another word. Herbert wasn’t worth it.
Their steward had been specially requested, he told her, to see that their baggage was taken to the train. Please don’t worry, madam, it’s all taken care of,” he said confidently. Lauren relaxed and luxuriated in Mike’s providence.
She made her good-byes to the models in their sitting room before they went on deck to disembark. “That way we won’t be trying to keep in touch in the crowd,” she explained. The models were really sorry to part with her; their evident affection moved Lauren. With many good wishes for their future success, and an urgent request to look her up soon after they returned to Los Angeles, she sent them ahead of her to disembark.
Half an hour later she walked toward the boat train. Someone came up behind her and took her arm.
“There you are,” Mike said with satisfaction. “Everything all right?”
“Yes, thank you.” Lauren was too happy to say any more.
They were almost safe on the train when the reporters found them. Lauren, who hadn’t expected much notice—after all, as Herbert had reminded her, her award was in the nature of a consolation prize—was shocked at the strident and often impertinent questions Mike was fielding. It wasn’t all velvet, being such a wealthy and notable man, she decided.
And then one of the reporters called out, “Is that your current playmate, Mr. Landrill? What’s her name?”
Mike strode forward to stand directly in front of the fellow. “Would you like to apologize or would you prefer a sock in the jaw?” Mike asked quietly.
Only those reporters standing directly beside the offender heard him. They moved back out of the way, but just a little, keeping their front seats for the fight.
The man took a good look at Mike’s narrowed eyes and large fists, and backed away. “Sorry, ma’am.” He flicked a calculating glance at Lauren. “I just wanted to know the name of Mr. Landrill’s latest, ah, popsy. Now!” He caught the fury in Mike’s eyes, waved his hand, and a flashbulb exploded. “Thanks.”
“This lady is my fiancée,” Mike said grimly. “We shall be married soon. Now get the hell out of my way before I walk over you.”
Without further comment to the crowd of avid reporters who followed, yelling questions, Mike put his arm around Lauren’s shoulders and led her to one of the first-class carriages. He slammed the door in the faces of the press hounds and helped Lauren to a seat, taking the one between her and the window. Then he smiled.
“I warned you we’d have to run the gauntlet,” he said wryly. Then he watched her face. He seemed to be waiting for something.
Lauren hadn’t been able to think clearly since Mike’s announcement. Of course she knew it was a face-saver, but still it was such a massive defense—like hitting a flea with a pile driver. She nodded at him, and then looked around her to avoid meeting his eyes.
There were several other travelers in their section, none of whom, with true British decorum, was so much as glancing at the latest arrivals. Mike caught her eye and smiled.
“A delightful change from those importunate pests,” he said in a passable imitation of an Oxford accent. He was rewarded by a grunt of agreement from behind an open newspaper.
He kept his eyes on Lauren’s face, waiting for her to say something, but she was too confused to know how to deal with the problem. No, she admitted, she wanted his comment to be true and hated to say anything that might close off the possibility that he meant it.
The rest of the short trip was accomplished in silence. Mike made no more overtures; his face was shuttered and tired-looking. Lauren was too stunned to speak. When they reached the station, Mike was recognized as they made their way to the street by a uniformed chauffeur, who got them and their bags settled in a limousine with the minimum of trouble. A glass partition gave them privacy. Lauren leaned back with a sigh compounded of relief at being alone with Mike and apprehension at his continued silence. Why didn’t he open the conversation? Why didn’t he say something?
On the way to the hotel, Mike continued to brood. Lauren made up her mind that he was unhappy at his impulsive declaration to the press. Should she reassure him that she wouldn’t hold him to it? She wished so desperately that it was true that she found it difficult to bring up the subject. She stared out her window, frowning and thinking so hard that she didn’t see the bright streets through which they were passing.
Gradually she became aware of a feeling of stress in the closed compartment. Perhaps it was the quality of the silence, which seemed to change and become electric; perhaps it was a difference in the position and stance of the man’s big body seated so close to hers in the car. At any rate, Lauren realized that Mike was under an increasing tension of some sort. She turned her head to glance at him, and was shocked to perceive that he was in a flaming temper.
She opened her mouth to ask what was wrong, and couldn’t. His narrow-eyed glare robbed her of speech. Yet when his first remark came, it was delivered not with anger but with ice-cold sarcasm.
“You’ve done it to me, haven’t you? Succeeded where all the other greedy ladies failed? Now I suppose you’ve got the wedding, the honeymoon, and the divorce settlements all planned?”
From trembling hope and fear Lauren was driven into unbridled anger. “I said nothing. You were the one who told the reporters—”
“You knew I wouldn’t let them foul-mouth you,” he snapped.
“I had no idea they would say anything about me at all. I’m pretty small potatoes compared to the great Mr. Landrill. If you feel that angry at the idea of marriage, you shouldn’t have said what you did.”
“I didn’t hear you denying it. Either to them or to me while we were on the train. I waited for you to repeat what you’d said last night about not bargaining or demanding a ring, but not a word. Then I thought you didn’t want to discuss our private business in front of the Britishers, so I waited for us to be alone here in the car. But no, clever Mrs. Rose has got what she’s been angling for ever since she found out who I was. Or had you looked me up before you left Los Angeles?”
This was a nightmare. Lauren could hardly recognize the man beside her as the one who had made love so passionately on the ship. There was only one thing to do.
“Of course, I’m not going to marry you. I don’t—”
He cut her short. Apparently he was so angry that he hadn’t even heard her rejection.
“My father and mother destroyed each other—he, by his callous neglect of her, she by her greed and cold nature. Lilith took me to the cleaners emotionally even worse than she did financially. She had a dozen lovers, male and female. She’d pick up with my best friends. For two years after I got rid of her, I couldn’t look at a woman without wanting to vomit. And now Buffy is doing the same number on my brother. Women! You’re disgusting.”
Lauren could have protested that she was not his mother or Lilith or Buffy, but what was the use? Her failure to reject the announcement he’d made to the reporters had damned her in Mike’s eyes. He was so afraid of being trapped and then destroyed that he wasn’t ready to hear anything she could say. So she kept very quiet and stared straight ahead. Even when Mike snarled. “Well?” at her, she resisted the urge to explain, to comfort. He would only think it was another move in a campaign to get power over him.
“I was right, then,” he snapped as the limousine drew up in front of the Ritz. “It’s a good thing I found out so quickly.”
He got out and stalked into the hotel without waiting for Lauren. There were three reporters hanging around the entrance, and they followed at his heels, yelping questions.
The chauffeur had opened the trunk and was taking out the bags. Lauren went to him, took her case, smiled her thanks—she couldn’t manage to speak—and looked around for a taxi. She saw one and gestured the driver over.
The chauffeur appeared at her shoulder, a worried expression on his face.
Lauren found her voice. “It’s all right. I’ve thanked Mr. Landrill for the lift. Thank you, also.”
She climbed up into the big boxlike cab. The chauffeur handed in her bag and shut the door. He still looked worried. He touched his cap to her as the cab drew away from the curb.
“Where to, miss?” asked the cabby.
“The Bristol Hotel, please,” Lauren said. She was glad of the gloomy interior of the musty old cab. She could cry without anyone seeing her. But somehow, she didn’t.
It was a very short trip to the Bristol. When she got there, she found that Dani and Nella hadn’t checked in yet. Also no one had canceled her reservation, thank God. She signed the register and followed the bellboy up to her room. It was small, tastefully decorated, and empty. It also had a lock and key, which she used as soon as the boy had left her suitcases. Slowly she took off her clothing, dug into her suitcase for a nightgown, and got into bed.
I wish, she thought drearily, I was dead.
And then she cried. For a long time.
It was the telephone ringing that awakened her. She made no effort to answer it. However, a few minutes later, there was a pounding on the door. Lauren said nothing. And then Dani’s voice, shrill enough to be heard through the door, called to her, “Lauren! Are you in there?”
Wearily, feeling more like a hundred than thirty-five, Lauren padded over and unlocked the door. Dani took one look at her face and grabbed her. “It’s all right, Lauren, we’re here now. Nella and I will look after you, poor baby.”
Looking into those concerned brown eyes, Lauren felt the first break in the iron agony of grief that had held her imprisoned.
The models insisted that she accompany them to the theater. They had managed to get three tickets, they informed her proudly, to a hilariously funny show that had been running for nine years. Lauren glanced at her watch. Five o’clock. She forced a smile. Right now she wanted nothing more than to hide in her room until it was time to catch the plane for Los Angeles, but Dani and Nella’s loyalty demanded a cheerful response.
“We’ll have to try some of that famous British high tea, then,” she said.
“Time? No way,” Dani advised her positively. “The show begins at six-thirty. I guess that’s for the convenience of people who want to dine in style after the show, at nine or ten o’clock. But we’re ravenous. We’ll dress and have dinner before we go.”
Hastily Lauren calculated. Shower, dress, eat, taxi to show. Between five and six-thirty?
“You’re planning to snatch a bite in the coffee shop?” she asked.
Dani gave her a superior smile. “The Bristol Hotel doesn’t have a coffee shop,” she announced. “I already checked. But they do have a gorgeous maître d’ and he says he’ll serve us dinner if we get there by five-thirty. Not all their guests want to wait till ten o’clock to have a meal.”
Lauren couldn’t help smiling. Dani was incorrigible. Lauren only hoped it wouldn’t occur to her to ask some handsome guard at Buckingham Palace to give her a private tour.
All through the elegant meal served in the Bristol’s spacious dining room, Dani and Nella chatted excitedly. There were only two other tables occupied. At one sat an elderly couple in tweeds, who apparently had nothing to say to one another, but ate every course with relish. At the other table sat two men in faultless evening dress. One of them was a good-looking middle-aged man. To Dani’s dissatisfaction, neither of them spared a look at the other diners, but instead carried on a low-voiced, intense argument throughout the meal.
The food was superb: lobster bisque, Cornish game hens, asparagus, accompanied by a fine white wine, and then raspberries in thick cream. They had no time to linger over coffee. Lauren signed for the meal and left a generous tip. Dani had been right. She was welcoming the trip to the theater, since no one could reach her by phone or in person while she was there.
And then she though bitterly, who am I trying to fool? I’m just afraid he won’t want to reach me ever again. And I don’t want to sit around waiting for him not to call.
Dani noted the bitter droop to Lauren’s lips but said nothing. She didn’t believe in asking questions about personal troubles. She told herself she might have to do something if she knew the score, but that cynical attitude was just was just a pose. She really couldn’t bear to see anyone hurt. Not knowing was a defense. She urged Lauren to get a taxi so they could get to the theater before curtain time.
“It’s only six o’clock,” protested Lauren. “The way we raced through the meal, the maître d’ will never forgive us.”
Lauren found herself laughing with her friends at the naughty, funny play. Nella bought chocolates and tea in the intermission. They were still chuckling over certain lines and actions in the play as they got out of the taxi and went into the small but luxurious lobby at the hotel. “Thank you for tonight. I really enjoyed it,” Lauren said.
They got their keys and went toward the elevator.
“They call it a lift here,” Nella whispered.
“Well, it does,” argued Dani, who already showed signs of becoming an Anglo-phile. “I’d rather be lifted than elevated.”
While Nella was puzzling this out, they reached their floor and went toward their rooms. Taped on Lauren’s door was a large, official-looking envelope. Lauren took it down, opened her door, and said goodnight to the models. Nella looked anxious, but Dani pushed her into their room, which was next to Lauren’s.
With her door locked behind her, Lauren opened the envelope with shaking fingers. Whatever he had to say, she wasn’t going to get mixed up with Mike Landrill ever again. It hurt too much. She took a deep breath. She had to know what the note said, even at the risk of further pain. She took the folded letter out of the envelope. A slip of paper fell out to the floor. Absently, Lauren bent to retrieve it. And then she saw what it was.
It was a check for twenty thousand dollars. And it was made out to Lauren Rose, and signed, in a slashing hand, Mike Landrill.
Lauren felt such a gust of rage that she shook with it. That bastard. That rotten excuse for a human being. How dare he send her money to pay her off as though she were some cheap tramp! Not pausing to reflect that at twenty thousand, the tramp could hardly be called cheap,. Lauren jammed the unread letter and the check into her handbag and almost ran back downstairs and out of the hotel.
There was a taxi waiting near the entrance. Lauren flagged it imperiously.
“The Ritz,” she snapped.
Her screeching rage hadn’t had time to cool down when she was deposited in front of his hotel. She strode into the lobby, and demanded to be told the number of Mr. Landrill’s suite.
“Is he expecting you, madame?” enquired the clerk.
“Oh, yes,” said Lauren loftily. She would have told any lie in the book in order to throw the check in his rotten face.
When she had the number, Lauren lost no time in going up to the correct floor. She strode along the corridor, her anger carrying her. When she reached the door, she hammered on it with her fist and then turned the handle. It gave. She flung the door open.
“What kept you?”
Michael Landrill was lounging on a comfortable-looking couch, dressed in the dark-blue robe she well remembered. Near him was a trolley loaded with silver chafing dishes and trays of food. Coffee bubbled in a percolator, its fragrance mouth-watering.
Mike stood up with a grin. “I knew the check would bring you if the note didn’t.”
Lauren was dizzy with the conflict of emotions that pounded at her brain. “What note? I didn’t read the letter. When I saw that check I could have—I could have—”
“Thanked me nicely?” There was derisive laughter in his words, but his eyes held a light Lauren didn’t understand. “Kissed me? Killed me?”
Lauren gritted her teeth. “Of all the rotten, low-down, creeps I ever met.” She drew a breath. “If you think you’re going to give me money for what was between us, you’ve got another think coming. All I want to do is forget that I ever met you.”
“That’s going to be kind of hard,” Mike said in a surprisingly calm voice.
It caught Lauren’s attention. “What do you mean?” she asked suspiciously.
“Well, if we’re going on a honeymoon, we sure can’t pretend we don’t know each other. People would think it was peculiar,” he added in a tone of kindly explanation.
Lauren gaped at him. Was he crazy? What was this about honeymoons?
The man actually laughed! Lauren surged forward, her hand raised to strike the laughter off his mocking face. He caught it, and since it held her purse, he took that from her and opened it. He extracted the letter.
“I knew you’d bring it,” he said, pleased. “You probably intended stuffing it down my throat.”
“How right you are,” Lauren snapped.
“Did you read the letter?” Mike persisted.
“No! The check fell out and I saw it. I got so angry—”
Mike grinned. “It worked, didn’t it? I knew that if the note didn’t—”
Lauren snatched the note out of his hands rudely. She flipped it open. It read:
Dear Lauren,
Please come to the Ritz and let me beg your pardon properly for the foolish, stupid, childish act I put on this afternoon. I guess it was the last strike back of a bitter conditioned reflex I’ve been saddled with since I was a kid.
Or perhaps it was bridal nerves?
Anyway, I’ve been fighting it out in my mind, and the answer is simple. I’ve got to marry you, so I can have exclusive rights to giving you your showers. Also feeding you midnight suppers, and swimming with you at the crack of dawn, and maybe letting you win a few more races. Also I can’t jeopardize my chances of signing you for Landrill’s, exclusively. My lawyer would never forgive me if I lost him our chance at September Song! To say nothing of my chef, who feels he has never been properly appreciated.
So please come, Lauren.
I beg you. My lawyer begs you. My chef begs you—or would, if he realized the problem.
If you say no to this triple plea, then take the money and spend it on a smear campaign of Landrill’s; or buy Herbert an exploding cigar. Or something.
I hope you’ll come. Because I love you.
Lauren folded the note slowly. She wanted to look at him, and yet she was almost afraid to. What would she see on his face?
And then, suddenly, it didn’t matter. Because she loved him so desperately that nothing in life would ever have been truly joyous again if she had lost him.
She dropped the letter and and faced him fully. And he wasn’t laughing. There was a look she had never seen before, a searching, hopeful, vulnerable sweetness and appeal that broke down every defense she might have erected. She ran to him, and his arms were open and ready when she reached him.
“Oh, Lauren,” he said, and his deep voice trembled with the love and relief he felt. “Oh, Lauren, thank God. I thought I’d blown the one chance I’ve ever had at the real thing.”
His kiss, hard and demanding, expressed his need. And then it softened, and became deliciously seductive. Lauren opened her love-drugged eyes. He was smiling down at her, so pleased and satisfied at the success of his stratagem that she had to chuckle.
“You said, once,” he stated, “that you didn’t want a shipboard romance. Well, I’m afraid you’re going to have to settle for one.” He waited, eyes glinting with mischief, for the expected flare-up.
Laurel smiled demurely. She trusted the guy. Still, not to spoil his joke, she said, “What do you mean, shipboard romance?”
He laughed triumphantly. “I’ve just booked us for the Queen Elizabeth’s world tour. And am I going to romance you for three months!”
“I love you, too,” Lauren whispered.
About the author
Elizabeth Chater was the author of more than 24 novels and countless short stories. She received a B.A. from the University of British Columbia and an M.A. from San Diego State University, and joined the faculty of the latter in 1963 where she began a lifelong friendship with science fiction author Greg Bear. She was honored with The Distinguished Teacher award in 1969, and was awarded Outstanding Professor of the Year in 1977. After receiving her Professor Emeritus, she embarked on a new career as a novelist with Richard Curtis as her agent. In the 1950s and 60s she published short stories in Fantastic Universe Magazine and The Saint Mystery Magazine, and she won the Publisher’s Weekly short story contest in 1975. She went on to publish 22 romance novels over an 8 year period. She also wrote under the pen names Lee Chater, Lee Chaytor, and Lisa Moore. For more information, please visit http://www.elizabethchater.com