Age of Consent Page 9

  ‘Of course, it must be ... very difficult for you now,’ Marina was saying. ‘I mean, holding on to such memories now that you don’t really think of Dane as being quite ... brotherly?’

  ‘I’m afraid I don’t know what you mean,’ Helen lied, fighting to keep voice and expression as blandly innocent and knowing she couldn’t maintain it for long.

  ‘Oh, I think you do,’ Marina replied, a knowing sneer barely hidden. ‘And one could hardly blame you, I suppose, although heaven knows it must be difficult enough competing with a ghost without adding incestuous memories into the exercise. And ... especially when you must realise you can’t possibly succeed.’

  ‘What are you talking about?’ Helen asked. Knowing, but forced to deny it both to her haughty interrogator and to herself. ‘There’s nothing between Dane and myself, if that’s what you’re getting at. And there never has been.’

  ‘Of course,’ Marina smiled, a panther’s smile, a cat-like, animal smile so filled with innuendo, with disbelief, that it seemed her gleaming teeth dripped venom.

  Worse, her attitude seemed somehow capable of besmirching Helen’s true relationship with Dane, seemed to dirty it, to create in Helen a feeling of self- loathing that she didn’t feel, and yet somehow did.

  Again, Helen had to suppress a shudder of distaste, a feeling, a knowledge, even, that beside this woman she was too naive, too innocent in the ways of womankind. The confidence brought to her by the dress, by Dane’s reaction to it, drained away beneath the gaze of Marina’s feline eyes.

  ‘What are you two conspiring about, all hidden away in the corner like this?’ Dane’s voice, so unexpected, almost made Helen leap in fright, but Marina showed no such signs of guilt.

  ‘Girl talk, darling,’ she replied, a malicious smile, evident at least to Helen, playing across her vivid lips. But it was the remainder of her statement that struck at Helen like a whip-lash, ripping into the tenderness of her situation in a single cruel blow.

  ‘Actually, we’ve been discussing your wicked past,’ Marina said. ‘And your young Helen has been telling me all about you and ... Vivian!’

  Helen gasped, unable to accept the deliberateness of the lie. Then she looked up at Dane, pleading with her eyes, her entire face, for him to look at her, to see the lie for what it was. But he wasn’t looking at Helen, and only the slight twitching of the muscles at his jaw line revealed how he might have taken the remark.

  ‘Well I’d watch it, if I were you, Marina,’ he said, voice soft, silken, coldly angry to Helen’s ear yet purring with the charm he could so easily assume. ‘Because my young Helen has been known to lie, on occasion,’ he continued, and the sound of her name from his lips was touched with bitterness, burned with acid as sharp as Helen’s own fear.

  And his eyes, which now met Helen’s in a brief, undeniably fleeting glance, were as cold as the grave. Helen summoned up all of her courage, wanting to deny the malicious charge, needing to deny it, but unable to find the words before Dane took Marina by the arm and strolled back towards the centre of the party.

  ‘Bitch!’ Helen spat silently at the departing brunette. ‘Bitch ... bitch ... bitch ...’ But there was no one to hear the silently-mouthed words, and nobody to soften the sickening, sinking feeling that plunged through Helen’s midriff like an icy dagger.

  For the rest of the evening, Helen felt that Dane was ignoring her, perhaps deliberately because of what he thought she might have confided to Marina, or perhaps just because his hostess’s daughter was once again monopolising his time.

  Helen didn’t really know and wasn’t really sure she cared. All she wanted to do was to leave, to go home, to free herself from the aura of malignancy that now seemed to surround her. That Marina could lie so deliberately and so easily didn’t now surprise her, but it was devastating to think that Dane could be so easily taken in by the lie.

  Obviously, she thought, he was much more tender, much more vulnerable in his loss of Vivian than she’d ever imagined, or he wouldn’t be reacting this way, wouldn’t be so easily stirred up by Vivian’s memory and the possibility of Helen saying something about her.

  And yet, what could he think Helen might say? She knew of nothing that could be said against Vivian, even if she might be so callous as to speak ill of the dead, which she definitely was not! And the little she had told Marina was no more than the truth. Vivian had been the centre of Dane’s universe. He had loved her totally, completely. And had never denied it during her life-time, so why should he feel obliged now to fight shy of Helen speaking about what had been a good marriage, an excellent marriage?

  Unless, she thought, he was growing close enough to Marina that he didn’t want Vivian’s ghost to step into the picture. That might very well explain his sudden coldness. Vivian might ... must exist in the relationship between herself and Dane, because Vivian was a part of both their memories. But if Marina had never met Vivian, and could therefore not be tied to her in Dane’s mind by tentacles from the past, as Helen was, then perhaps he wanted to keep it that way, to be able to separate in his mind the two women.

  She thought about it, mulling it around, twisting and turning it in her mind like some cat’s-cradle of tenuous thought, even while she was carrying on conversations with other party guests, even while she fended off the obvious attentions of two different male guests who might have greatly interested her — at another time and in another place.

  And it was still holding pride-of-place in her mind when the time came — finally! — for them to leave, for her to face being alone with Dane in the car, in his home, and to face at least one attempt to convince him that she hadn’t been betraying any confidences, that Marina had led her into a trap and snapped it shut with a masterly, vicious gesture.

  ‘We weren’t talking about Vivian, you know,’ Helen began, hardly waiting until the car was in motion before she let the words burst from her.

  Dane said nothing. He drove with both hands neatly balanced on the steering wheel, both eyes intent on the road before him, alert to the demands of the light traffic around them. And he should have answered, could have at least acknowledged her remark, Helen thought.

  ‘Didn’t you hear me?’ she was finally forced to ask, spitting out the words now, angry with both herself and with him. Hating Marina, but hating herself too for being so gullible, so easily trapped.

  ‘I heard you.’ A flat, calm, expressionless statement that told her less than nothing. He had heard her. So what?

  ‘But you don’t believe me.’ And while she tried not to sound hurt, not to sound wounded by his lack of faith, she didn’t try too hard. Not that it mattered.

  ‘Why should I not believe you?’ he replied, still in flat tones, still with nothing to guide her in assessing his meaning, his true feelings,

  ‘Because obviously you think I’m a liar,’ she replied, angry now and not hesitant about showing it. ‘You said so; you told your sultry little friend that specifically.’

  ‘Ah ... is that what’s bugging you?’ he replied. ‘I thought it was something important.’

  ‘You don’t consider it important when you call somebody a liar?’

  ‘I didn’t call you a liar, you know,’ he said. ‘I said that you have been known to lie on occasions, which isn’t the same thing at all.’

  ‘Well I fail to see the difference.’

  His only reply was a half-grunt that might have been affirmative or the total opposite. And in the silence which followed, he made no comment to clarify that.

  Helen sat there, eyes burning with tears she daren’t let go, watching the lights of Hobart go past, seeing cars approach, then disappear past them, seeing nothing, really, because she wasn’t looking.

  How could he possibly be so obtuse? Except, of course, quite deliberately. As the silent drive continued, Helen became more and more certain that he was deliberately punishing her, and worse, that he was even enjoying it.

  But why? Once again, she was overcome by the question of why it should matt
er to Dane whether she discussed Vivian with the treacherous Marina or anyone else, for that matter. It wasn’t as if she could say anything against Vivian, and he must know that. Nor was there any logical reason for him to object because he fancied that his memories should remain sacred; she’d been asked for her own impressions. And yet ... how had Marina so accurately known that she could put Helen in the wrong just by mentioning it? That, she decided, was the real question!

  And for Helen it was a question without an answer. Dane obviously wasn’t going to provide one. Obviously wasn’t going to provide answers to anything, judging by his stem silence as they drove steadily southward, leaving the city lights behind them.

  Damn him! ‘Is that all you’re going to say about it?’ she suddenly demanded.

  His shrug was maddening. ‘What else do you want me to say?’

  ‘Well, you might at least admit that you’re deliberately being close-mouthed about this, that you’re deliberately leading me on, although for the life of me I don’t know why,’ Helen replied.

  ‘Oh, might I?’ And he was, she realised, only barely holding back a blatant chuckle. He was laughing at her!

  ‘You ... you are a bastard, did you know that?’ she cried, her own voice ragged, but certainly not with held- in chuckles. She was fast becoming furious.

  ‘I have been called that on occasion. And worse. My mother wouldn’t be amused,’ he replied gravely, but still with that hidden amusement lying just beneath the surface.

  ‘Ooh! Can’t you be serious for once?’ she demanded. It was impossible to deal with Dane Curtis in this mood, as Helen knew only too well. And yet deal with him she must, or find life truly unbearable living in the same house with him as she was.

  ‘I could, but frankly I think that one of us taking themselves too seriously is enough,’ he replied. ‘More than enough, if you really want to know.’

  ‘Taking themselves too seriously.’ She repeated his words slowly, not really thoughtfully, but enough so that she was forced to react. ‘You mean me, obviously. What the hell is that supposed to mean?’

  Now he did chuckle, the noise rumbling from his throat in the sound one makes when humouring a fractious child. Helen seethed in silence, waiting for him to speak out, to verbalise whatever he thought was so funny. And when he finally did, she almost wished he hadn’t.

  ‘Ah, young Helen, you’re thick as two short planks sometimes,’ Dane growled finally. ‘I think you’ve been stuck back in the bush too long, for sure. All your journalistic instincts have atrophied and your defence mechanisms are following, from the look of it.’

  ‘How very observant,’ she sneered sarcastically. ‘And it tells me absolutely nothing.’

  ‘Only because of what I’ve just said. Really, I’m surprised at you. Not to mention mildly ashamed at seeing you let an amateur like Marina lead you down the garden path like a bull with a ring in its nose. Or have you always been this gullible and I just never noticed before?’

  ‘What are you talking about?’ Helen cried, ‘It’s not me your voluptuous friend led down the garden path. Or any other path, for that matter. It’s you — or hadn’t you noticed that?’

  ‘Nobody leads me anywhere,’ was the stern reply. ‘Least of all by using jealousy as their excuse.’

  ‘Jealousy? Who’s jealous. And of who?’

  ‘Whom ... the correct word is whom.’

  ‘Oh, for goodness sake. This is hardly the time to be playing at semantics,’ Helen shrieked. ‘Can’t we even have a discussion without you wanting to correct my grammar while we’re at it?’

  ‘We are not having a discussion,’ Dane smirked. ‘We are having, or are about to have, an argument. In fact, I should be very surprised if it doesn’t boil up into a full-scale brawl, a proper bloody blue. So I might as well correct your grammar while I’m at it, eh?’

  ‘If you don’t stop playing silly buggers and tell me what it is you’re getting at, this is going to be more than an argument,’ she retorted, blazing now. ‘I’m only about thirty seconds away from giving you such a wallop ...’

  ‘No! Mustn’t hit the driver,’ he replied. "Very bad form, that. Drivers have rights; passengers have none.’

  ‘They’ve got the right to get out and walk, which is just about what I’m tempted to do,’ Helen snapped.

  ‘That isn’t much of a threat. Unless I stop, which I’m hardly likely to do,’ Dane drawled, infuriatingly. ‘So let’s go back to the original discussion, which, from memory, involved Marina leading you down some path or another. Although you, of course, deny that vehemently.’

  ‘Well of course I do. What she did was lie. L.I.E. Lie. She quite blatantly and deliberately told you that she and I had been discussing Vivian, and you, typically, believed her.’

  Dane seemed nonplussed. ‘And all of this, I’m sure, followed an equally blatant attempt by Marina to pump you, dear Helen, for information on the subject. Which, knowing you, gained her not very much at all except some intricate footwork and verbal hedging.’ And he paused, as if to let that sink in, then continued. ‘Because of course your attitude to such questions would be that if she wanted to know, she ought to be asking me, not you. Okay so far?’

  She snarled her affirmative reply through gritted teeth, wondering how on earth this man could be so damnably accurate in his guesses. And worse, so damnably smug about being accurate.

  ‘And, of course, she also made a fair bid to find out just what our relationship — yours and mine — might be, while she was at it. To which you would have lied or said nothing at all.’

  ‘I did no such thing,’ Helen interjected, ‘1 told her the plain, simple truth ... that there’s nothing at all between us, which, frankly, is exactly what she wanted to hear.’

  ‘Which is the last thing she wanted to hear,’ Dane corrected. ‘Because even if you believed it, there’s no possible way Marina could believe it. But ... it’ll keep her on her toes, if nothing else.’

  ‘Which is exactly what you want, isn’t it?’ Helen suddenly saw what was shaping up; herself as some sort of blonde red herring to keep Marina on her toes and make things easier for Dane to handle as he sorted out his relationship with the redhead. ‘That’s ... that’s ... truly despicable,’ she sighed. ‘If you’d planned on using me for something like that, the least you might have done is told me about it. I thought we were supposed to be friends.’

  ‘Using you for what?’ And now she wished he wasn’t driving, because it made it only too easy for him to avoid meeting her eyes, made it too easy for him to lie.

  ‘You know damned well what,’ she snapped. ‘Using me to put your friend Marina off-balance, although how you’d expect me to manage it, I can’t imagine.’

  ‘Ah, but I’m not using you for that. Not at all,’ he said, and almost made the denial ring true. ‘It wasn’t me that bought that dress and gave it life. It wasn’t me that arranged for you to be at the party in the first place, and it certainly wasn’t me that made Marina foam at the mouth with jealousy. I had nothing to do with it at all,’

  ‘In a pig’s eye. If it wasn’t for you, she wouldn’t give two hoots where I was or what I wore,’ Helen replied. ‘But of course you already know that.’

  ‘I know that the way you looked tonight in that outfit, every man there was jealous of me,’ Dane grinned. ‘Most of the women were merely green with envy.’ And then he laughed outright. ‘Especially Marina, who quite rightfully, I think, blamed you for stealing her thunder. She rather prefers to be belle of the ball, especially at her own parties.’

  ‘Well she’s welcome to it,’ Helen retorted, her anger only spurred on by the confusion of his compliments. ‘Especially if her ego’s so fragile that it can only be soothed by you calling me a liar. I’m not a liar and I won’t have that sort of thing. Is that perfectly clear?’

  ‘I already told you that I didn’t call you a liar. I merely said that you’ve been known, on occasion, to lie. There’s a world of difference.’

  ‘There’
s not a whit of difference and you know it. What’s more, you did it deliberately. And you did it deliberately to spite her. That’s what offends me. Is that why you brought me down here, to act as some sort of weird buffer between you and your girlfriend?’

  ‘Now really, Helen. Would I do a thing like that?’ And his mock indignation was more than Helen could bear. She fairly exploded.

  ‘You could and you bloody well would! And you did! And I won’t have it, do you hear me. I won’t have it. I won’t, damn it!’

  But it was to no avail. Dane continued driving as soberly as before, letting the words wash across his broad shoulders like a soft breeze, seemingly oblivious to Helen’s anger and hurt and frustration. ‘We’re nearly home,’ he said. ‘Let’s save the rest of this ... discussion until I can concentrate on it without driving into the ditch or some such silly thing.’

  ‘You can save it forever, for all I care,’ Helen snorted. ‘I’ve said all I’m going to say on the subject.’

  ‘Suits me,’ Dane replied, turning into the driveway. ‘I never wanted to indulge in such a stupid argument in the first place.’

  It would have suited Helen as well, except that it kept on nagging at her; even as she was changing before joining Dane for a night-cap, she kept wondering if he could really be using her as some sort of buffer against the obvious attentions of Marina Cole. It was, Helen thought, probably conceited of her to even consider such a thing. She could hardly be considered real competition for such a beautiful and experienced opponent. But the real issue wasn’t that at all. It was more closely related to the simple fact of Dane using her in such a fashion. That implied a conceit on his part that didn’t fit with her own image of Dane, and even worse was the fact that her image was becoming all too important to her, all too real.

  He could be so damned charming, only to cut her down like a bad weed at any time she ventured too close to him emotionally. Or ... physically. During the evening, he’d seemed to watch as others danced with her, but hadn’t danced with her himself even once. Of course, he’d been rather occupied with their hostess, but still ...