LITMIR.BIZ

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of her eye Amy saw Madame Ondine undulating towards the source of trouble.

      When they could hear themselves again Jack said musingly, ‘I wonder whether your brother-in-law is being deliberately indiscreet? I should say that he is treading on the very thinnest of thin ice.’

      Amy’s hand stopped with her glass halfway to her mouth. She followed the direction of Jack’s lazy stare, and saw Peter Jaspert.

      Peter was dancing, his high-coloured face brick red and his eyes closed. He was moving slowly, not quite in time to the music, and his partner was bent against him like a bow. Her face was hidden against his shoulder. One of Peter’s big hands held her hips against his, and the other had drawn their twined fingers in against her breast.

      Amy felt the colour rising in her cheeks at the thought that she and Jack might ever have looked so openly, nakedly in possession of each other.

      The band had been playing a sweet, slow arrangement of ‘These Foolish Things’. The music stopped on a long drawn-out note, Peter turned his partner, and they stopped with a tipsy flourish.

      Amy recognized the woman then. It was Sylvia Cole. She put her glass down again and looked away.

      As Peter and Archer Cole’s wife rejoined their noisy party she heard several of their friends ironically clapping their performance. Amy bit her lip and stared down at the tablecloth. Peter was the last person she wanted to see, but it was already too late. With euphoria and whisky clearly buoying him up, Peter blundered over to their table.

      ‘Well. My little sister-in-law. Hello, Amy. Can’t I have a kiss, as family? Mmm. There. ‘Evening, Roper.’

      ‘Jaspert.’ Jack nodded coolly.

      ‘We’re having a party. Join us; you must know Talbot and Harrington, and Sylvia, of course you know Sylvia.’

      Amy found her voice. She looked up at Peter. ‘Thank you, but Jack and I are having a very quiet evening. We shall be leaving soon, and we wouldn’t want to break up your party for you.’ She could feel the heat of him from where she was sitting. He was like some big, steaming animal still hot from a chase. The thought of Isabel’s remoteness and pallor came back to her, and she shivered a little.

      ‘Dance, then,’ Peter begged her. ‘Just one. You won’t mind, Roper, will you, if I take her off for just one dance?’

      Jack inclined his head very slightly. ‘Amy?’ he asked drily. Jack wouldn’t decide anything for her, of course. Amy would have refused Peter Jaspert whatever he asked her, but then she thought with a sudden wave of exhaustion that it would cause less trouble to do what he wanted. She stood up, and Peter held out his arm to her. She took it, and he pulled her with a flourish on to the dance floor. His breath smelt of whisky and was hot enough to burn her cheek. She would have pulled away, but he was holding her too tightly. Even in the early days of dinners at Ebury Street, Amy had seen Peter the worse for drink, but he seemed much coarser, and heavier now. She felt her flesh grow chilly under his hands.

      ‘It’s a pity,’ he was mumbling, ‘that it’s all come to this. I like your mama, you know. And you, Amy.’ He pulled her a little closer, if that was possible. ‘But that was a terrible thing that Isabel did, y’know. Apart from all the other things I could tell you about. What’m I to do? How can a man trust a wife like that? There can’t be a divorce, of course. Not in my position. Wouldn’t help my chances. Bad enough as it is.’

      Amy went stiff with anger. The combination of cold dismissal of Isabel and amorousness towards herself disgusted her.

      ‘Isabel had a breakdown,’ she said coldly. ‘I don’t know exactly what drove her to it, but I could guess. How can you talk about trust? While Isabel sits in her nursing home, you are at a nightclub sprawling all over someone else’s wife.’

      Surprisingly, Peter Jaspert chuckled. ‘Sylvia and I are good friends. The best. And this is a private club. What goes on here is nobody’s business. I would have thought that you of all people would see that.’

      ‘What do you mean – of all people?’

      He was still chuckling, insinuating. ‘I mean you and Jack Roper. Look at you. You’re humming with it. You know what it’s all about, Amy, so don’t put on the wide-eyed debutante act. What am I supposed to do, with a crazy wife locked up in a mental home? Turn monk?’

      Amy stopped dead. Peter, still blundering with the music, tripped over her feet and almost stumbled.

      ‘Good night, Peter.’ She turned her back on him and began to thread her way through the dancers.

      ‘Anyway,’ she heard him say, too loudly, determined to have the last shot, ‘Isabel’s got her own fish to fry in that home. Don’t think I don’t hear.’

      With her chin up, looking straight ahead of her, Amy reached the table. Jack stood up and drew out her chair for her. Then he saw that she was trembling. His warm hand covered hers.

      ‘I shouldn’t have let you. He was tight. What did he say to upset you?’

      Amy’s smile was bitter. She was thinking about the difference. ‘He didn’t upset me.’

      The physical intimacy that she had discovered with Jack had seemed so natural just because he was Jack. His ability to piece together fragments into a satisfying whole had been her good fortune. Isabel had had nothing of the kind. Amy could still feel the heat of Peter Jaspert’s hands on her, and she understood.

      ‘Jack, I’d like to go home.’

      ‘Of course.’

      Peter Jaspert’s arm was around Sylvia Cole’s shoulders again as Jack shepherded her away. He didn’t look up as they passed.

      In the car Jack asked her, ‘Bruton Street or Chelsea?’

      ‘Chelsea,’ she answered. She wanted very much to be with Jack tonight.

      In the quiet little house Jack poured a tumbler full of brandy and put it into her hands, then drew her down on the sofa beside him.

      ‘Why did that upset you so much? Couldn’t you tell me?’ he persisted.

      ‘For Isabel. When he touched me …’ Amy shivered, and took a gulp of her brandy. ‘I don’t know why. He isn’t ugly, or even particularly obnoxious. He’s just … poor Isabel. I didn’t understand before. Do you know what he said? That a divorce would be out of the question, in his position. And that Isabel has other fish to fry.’

      Jack made a face at her, so full of comical shock and distaste that there was almost a smile in Amy’s eyes again. ‘Didn’t I tell you that Isabel is better off where she is? I’d rather live with Bill Parfitt than Herr Jaspert, any day. And I love his position. Horizontal on top of Sylvia Cole, did he mean? I can’t believe it’s the way to get on, publicly rogering your Minister’s wife.’

      Amy did laugh now. ‘It doesn’t seem to be doing him any harm. I heard he’s a great success. Do you think Archer knows?’

      ‘He can’t do. Yet.’ Jack leaned against the cushions, stretching out his long legs and settling Amy’s head against his shoulder. Gently he stroked her hair. ‘Mmm. That’s better. It won’t be long before Archer Cole does find out. I wouldn’t put any big money on Jaspert’s further advancement.’

      Amy settled herself so that her cheek rested against the pleated front of his shirt.

      ‘Why do you call him Herr Jaspert?’

      ‘Oh, partly because Massey & Dart are still heavily involved in German loan deals. They must be very good friends of Hitler’s by now. Particularly as he’s using the money to rearm as fast as he can. Archer Cole and his Cabinet pals refuse to see it, of course. The Red menace is the only thing that worries them.’

      ‘Jack,’ Amy asked very quietly, ‘will there be another war?’

      ‘Yes. Not yet, but it’s coming.’ He sat up abruptly and reached out for the brandy

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