Impetuous Masquerade. Anne Mather

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СКАЧАТЬ her eyes, sliding down her cheeks in weak betrayal, and she quickly turned her back on him as she scrubbed her knuckles over her eyes.

      If she had expected her tears to persuade him, she was wrong. As she stood there, struggling to control herself, she heard him flicking over the documents she had given him, in no apparent hurry to offer his apologies.

      ‘Yes,’ he said at last, ‘I’m sure these are genuine. But why shouldn’t I suspect their deliverer? If I was going to pretend to be someone else, I’d make pretty damn sure I had documentation, too.’

      ‘Oh, you’re impossible!’ Rhia spun round helplessly, her breakdown made all the more humiliating by reddened eyes and a drip at the end of her nose. ‘Why won’t you believe me? Why would I lie?’

      ‘Why would your sister lie?’

      Rhia bent her head, rubbing her nose disconsolately. ‘You tell me.’

      There was silence for a few pregnant seconds, and then Jared Frazer moved, walking past her to the table and depositing the articles she had given him with the rest of her belongings. Rhia flinched away from him as he passed her, but he didn’t touch her. After he had accomplished his mission, he returned to his position by the door, and when she looked up he was regarding her with something less than hostility in his brooding gaze.

      In spite of their differences, Rhia could not deny that he was a disturbing man, disturbing both in his manner and his appearance. The hooded eyes with their heavy lids, that had raked her trembling defiance previously, were only part of his dark attraction. Set above a narrow intelligent face, with high cheekbones and a prominent nose, they only hinted at the sensuality that was evident in every line of his thin-lipped mouth. She had never seen Glyn, but if he was anything like his uncle she could quite see why Valentina had found him so attractive. Even the dark lounge suit he was wearing fitted his lean muscular body with unerring elegance, accentuating the narrowness of his hips and the powerful strength of his legs.

      Yet, meeting his eyes, Rhia knew an uneasy sense of foreboding. It was strange, but now that the hardness of aggression was being erased from his features, she felt more—not less—anxiety. Why had he come here? What did he want? And why hadn’t Glyn’s parents made the trip?

      ‘Okay,’ he said, straightening from the indolent stance he had adopted, pushing back the lick of straight black hair that had tumbled across his forehead. ‘Suppose I accept what you say: I guess that means it was Valentina I spoke to earlier.’

      Rhia moved her head in a positive gesture.

      ‘So—where is she?’

      Rhia caught her lower lip between her teeth. ‘At—at work, I suppose.’

      ‘I assume you mean the hospital where she’s a student nurse?’

      ‘Naturally.’

      ‘No.’ He shook his head, folding his arms across the broad expanse of his chest, and Rhia’s anxiety kindled into a hard core of apprehension.

      ‘What do you mean, no?’

      ‘Where do you think I’ve been this evening? Apart from a bar.’

      Rhia frowned. ‘But she must be there. She told me she was on duty at eight o’clock.’

      His eyes narrowed. ‘You’ve seen her?’

      ‘Well—yes.’ Rhia coloured. ‘But it was at lunchtime. That—that was when I learned about what had happened——’ She broke off uncertainly. ‘How—how is Glyn?’

      ‘Still in a coma,’ said Jared Frazer flatly. ‘The doctors say it may be hours or days before he comes out of it. There’s nothing anybody can do until they know whether he’s suffered any brain damage.’

      ‘Oh, no!’ Rhia felt sick.

      ‘Oh, yes.’ Jared Frazer was relentless. ‘And I mean to find out how my nephew, who was a tolerably good driver, should have had the misfortune to wrap his automobile round a concrete post for no reason.’

      Rhia moved her head. ‘What—what did they tell you?’

      ‘Who? The doctors, or the police?’

      ‘The—police.’

      ‘They’re not happy with their investigations either,’ he replied, his eyes intimidatingly intent. ‘They think someone else may have been with him. Your sister, perhaps. They know she was with him earlier in the evening.’

      Rhia could not meet his eyes. ‘I—I wish I could help you.’

      ‘So do I,’ he averred grimly. ‘It would help to find your sister. Are you sure you have no idea where she might be?’

      ‘No.’ Rhia could be positive about that at least. ‘I—at lunchtime when I left her I understood she was going back to the hospital to see Glyn. I can’t imagine where else she would go.’

      Jared Frazer pulled a wry face. ‘You forget—she was here, wasn’t she? I spoke to her at—oh, I guess it must have been about two-thirty.’

      ‘Yes.’ Rhia tried to think. ‘But you’ve been to St Mary’s since then and she’s not there.’

      ‘That’s right.’

      Rhia linked her unsteady fingers together. ‘Then I don’t know where she is, Mr Frazer. I—I wish I did.’

      ‘Which leaves us with the original question, why should Valentina pretend to be you?’

      Rhia nodded. ‘I—I suppose—when she realised who you were——’

      ‘——she panicked!’

      ‘Panicked?’ Rhia endeavoured not to betray her alarm. ‘No, I—perhaps she was scared.’

      ‘Scared!’ He was scathing. ‘And why should she be scared, if she had nothing to hide?’

      ‘Oh, I don’t know. Why are you catechising me?’ Rhia’s nerves were rapidly getting the better of her. First Valentina’s confession, then the shock of meeting him at her door, and now this! She wasn’t a criminal, but she was being made to feel like one, and the knowledge of what her sister had told her made everything that was happening like some awful nightmare.

      Scraping her hand across her damp cheeks, she moved her shoulders in a dismissing gesture. ‘I think you’d better go, Mr Frazer,’ she said. ‘I’m sorry I can’t help you, but I’m sure Valentina will explain everything when she turns up.’

      ‘When she turns up?’ He glared at her. ‘And when might that be? Is she in the habit of disappearing for nights on end? Aren’t you worried about her?’

      ‘Worried!’ Rhia gasped. ‘Of course I’m worried. And—and in answer to your question, no—no, Val is not in the habit of sleeping rough, if that’s what you’re implying! But she’s obviously not here, and I don’t see what more I can tell you.’

      Jared Frazer regarded her broodingly. ‘Very well,’ he said at last, after subjecting her to another penetrating appraisal, ‘I’ll СКАЧАТЬ