my life,’ observed Chris laconically, sliding off his stool. ‘We can’t all be invited to champagne receptions, hobnobbing with the crème de la crème! Besides,’ he fumbled in his pocket for his pack of cigarettes, placing a fresh one between his lips, ‘they help me to concentrate, and right now, I need some inspiration.’
Cassandra, seated at her desk, looked up at the young man before her with grudging affection. She knew how hard he was working to make the business a success, and Liz had not been joking when she said he had a brilliant eye for colour. If Cassandra’s abilities lay in looking at a room and being able to judge its potentialities, Chris’s talent was for colouring her work, giving it life and beauty. His was the skill that combined furniture with fabric, and substantiated her spartan drawings with light and detail. At twenty-five, he was precisely ten months older than she was, and their association came from way back, when Cassandra, like him, was a student at the London School of Textile Design. Those were the days before Mike Roland came into her life, when she had still been uncertain of what she really wanted to do. At least her marriage to Mike had taught her that that kind of one-to-one relationship was not what she wanted, and although she would not have wished him dead, her freedom seemed particularly precious to her now.
‘So—–’ Chris flicked his lighter and applied it to the end of his cigarette. ‘Was there anybody interesting at the reception? What did you think of Stafford’s work?’
Cassandra chose to answer his second question first. ‘Quite frankly, I thought his paintings were horrible,’ she admitted candidly. ‘I didn’t like them, and I certainly didn’t understand them.’
‘Shades of Hieronymus Bosch,’ remarked Chris drily, putting his lighter away, and at her look of incomprehension, he added: ‘He was a Dutch painter of the fifteenth or sixteenth century, I’m not sure which. But his work was very pessimistic, and I’ve heard it said that Stafford’s is the same.’
Cassandra’s lips twitched. ‘You’re very well informed.’
‘Not really.’ Chris made a deprecatory gesture. ‘He had a marvellous use of colour, which I admire, and which no one else has successfully been able to imitate. And besides,’ he shrugged irrepressively, ‘I watched a programme about him on television, a couple of nights ago.’
Cassandra made a face and flung a pencil at him as Chris ducked back to his drawing board. He laughed and resumed his seat, and leaving her own, Cassandra came to look over his shoulder.
‘Hey, that’s good!’ she exclaimed, pulling her spectacles out of their case and sliding them on to her nose so that she could look more closely. She had discovered she was long-sighted only two months before, when after a series of headaches she had sought professional advice. In consequence, she now wore wide hornrims when she was working, and their size gave an added charm to her pale oval features.
Chris glanced sideways at her, his blue eyes alight with enthusiasm. ‘Do you think so?’ he asked. ‘Do you really think so? You don’t think I’ve gone over the top with all this dark oak and heavy wallpaper?’
‘Of course not.’ Cassandra straightened, smiling down into his lean good-looking features. ‘Chris, they told us what they wanted. They want us to restore the house’s original character. They want oak panelling and figured damask. They want velvet curtains and leather-bound books in the library.’ She shook her head. ‘I don’t suppose it really matters what the books are. You could put The Decameron up there, and they’d never notice. But,’ she grimaced, ‘so long as they’re happy, and they’re prepared to pay for it—who are we to object?’
Chris pulled thoughtfully at his nose, a habit he had when he was worried, and then looked doubtfully up at her. ‘Is that really how you feel?’ he asked, with sudden gravity, and she turned away and walked back to her desk, as if she needed to consider her response.
‘No,’ she conceded at last, perching on the edge of her desk and chewing at the earpiece of the spectacles she had removed from her nose. ‘But, Chris,’ she sighed, ‘we can only offer advice. If people refuse to take it . . .’
‘I don’t like these kind of jobs,’ declared Chris flatly. ‘I prefer it when we’re given a free hand to use the ability that they’re paying for!’
‘Well, so do I,’ exclaimed Cassandra impatiently. ‘But we’re not in business to create works of art, Chris. And every now and then we have to take a job we don’t like.’
Chris hunched his shoulders. ‘Well, why the hell did the Steiners employ a firm of interior designers, if they already knew what they wanted? Why didn’t they just contract the job out to some painting and decorating company, who’d do a perfectly competent job—–’
‘Chris, you know why. The Steiners like the idea of—–’
‘—using our name, I know.’
‘Not just that.’ Cassandra was honest. ‘Any firm of interior designers would do just as well. Only—oh, I suppose they thought we might be more amenable.’
‘Because we’re just establishing ourselves,’ said Chris drily, and Cassandra nodded.
‘I guess so. Anyway, Liz said—–’
‘Liz!’ Chris made a sound of derision. ‘Just tell Liz from me we’ll get our own commissions from now on, will you?’
‘Mmm.’
Cassandra’s thoughtful response was almost inaudible as she slid off the desk and walked round it to resume her seat. Chris’s indignation had struck a slightly distasteful chord in her memory, and she would have preferred not to remember Liz’s canvassing of her talents that afternoon. As well as rekindling her embarrassment, it brought Jay Ravek’s face too acutely to mind, and her own reactions to his dark intelligent features. She had found him attractive, but then what woman wouldn’t? He was tall, but not too tall; lean, but not skinny; and although he was not strictly handsome he possessed the kind of personal magnetism one could only describe as sex appeal. His eyes were almost black and deep-set, accentuating the heavy lids with their short thick lashes. His nose was straight between high cheek-bones, and his mouth with its thin upper lip and fuller lower one could look both cruel and sensuous.
Cassandra expelled her breath suddenly and pushed her spectacles back on to her nose. He had certainly made an impression, she thought, with a wry grimace. Liz would be horrified if she ever found out just how attractive Cassandra had found him, and her mother-hen qualities would be fully aroused at what she would see as the evidence of Cassandra’s vulnerability.
But it wasn’t true, Cassandra thought impatiently. Since Mike’s death she had met plenty of attractive men, not least Chris himself, who, despite his married state, had made it plain that he still found her as attractive as ever. If she had waited before committing herself to any further emotional entanglements, it was not because she was scared of getting hurt again. On the contrary, she doubted there was a man alive who could hurt her now. Her marriage to Mike had been a disaster, but it had also taught her more about relationships than any other experience could have done. She had entered into that marriage innocently, optimistically, eagerly—and within six months she had been shocked, bruised and disillusioned. Her immature expectations of what a marriage should be had been shattered by the kind of experiences she would have preferred to forget. Mike should never have got married. He liked the company of women far too much; and not just one woman, but many. Later, in her more cynical moments, Cassandra had wondered whether his constant search for satisfaction with women stemmed from his own inability to give satisfaction, and she had been grateful then for his accusations of her frigidity, which meant she was not obliged to suffer his attentions too often. She did not believe she was frigid, however. She had a perfectly normal interest in the opposite sex. If she had never truly enjoyed the act of love, that was not so unusual. She had friends with husbands and families who had confessed to a similar deficiency, which, she consoled herself, occurred most frequently with girls of a greater sensitivity. Her experiences were of the mind, rather than the body, she was convinced, and as she enjoyed kissing and caressing and the preliminaries of loveplay,