The Sister Secret (Family Ties) Read online

It’s for certain he doesn’t like me, Belvia thought, and could not make up her mind whether she appreciated his honesty in leaving her off the card, or if she thought him oafish and sadly lacking in the manners department for the omission.

  ‘Who could help liking you?’ she teased—to no avail.

  ‘Will you put them in your room?’ Josy begged, clearly not wanting to catch a glimpse of them anywhere and so be reminded of the man whose sophistication all too obviously awed her.

  ‘Of course,’ Belvia replied easily before she could think—and then realised that she did not want to be reminded of the beastly man either. ‘Or, better still, I’ll take them to Tracey when I go to the stables this afternoon. She’ll enjoy them, I’m sure.’

  ‘Oh, she will,’ Josy replied, starting to look easier. Tracey was one of the grooms up at the stables and had a positive passion for flowers. ‘Only don’t tell her that they came for me, will you?’

  ‘I’ll say they came from one of my many admirers,’ Belvia laughed, liking the humour of that thought—an admirer of hers was something which Latham Tavenner most definitely was not.

  The rest of the weekend passed without incident and Belvia was pleased to see that by Sunday evening, given that Josy was still suffering over the loss of her husband, as she would be for some time to come, she was otherwise back on a more even keel and calmer over Latham Tavenner’s attentions to her.

  Belvia got out of bed on Monday morning and felt more on an even keel herself. She went downstairs, saw her father in conversation with her sister through the open breakfast-room door, popped her head in and offered a ‘Good morning,’ then took herself off to the kitchen. She had just put a couple of slices of bread in the toaster when Josy joined her. ‘I’ve put the toast in for us,’ she began, but stopped when she saw that Josy was looking agitated. ‘What’s up, Jo?’ she asked.

  ‘I’ve just had a lecture from Father on the subject of shaping up and being more amenable to guests he brings into this house!’

  By ‘guests’, since he seldom invited anyone home, Belvia knew her father could only mean Latham Tavenner. And that angered her. But while on the one hand she wanted to go straight away to see their father and let him know that she and her sister had not the smallest desire to be included in his devious games to finance Fereday Products, she felt it was more important just then to try to calm Josy down.

  ‘Well, don’t let it throw you, love. Since Father only invites a guest home once in a flood, you haven’t a thing to worry about.’

  ‘But what if he does?’

  ‘He won’t,’ Belvia replied firmly, though she could see that Josy was far from convinced. ‘And if he does, then you can make yourself scarce, and I’ll look after Mr Latham Tavenner personally,’ she promised lightly.

  Josy still did not look reassured, and the day got under way badly, with their father going off to his office and with Belvia giving serious thought to her and her sister finding somewhere to live on their own and moving out. The only trouble with that, she mused as she took advantage of a lovely summer day and went into the garden to do some weeding, was that Josy was so shy with strangers, and any move they made would have to involve meeting new people.

  She still had Josy on her mind when half an hour later she went indoors for a cold drink. Would it be better for her sister to be made to meet new people? she wondered, but at once cancelled that idea. Seldom a day went by now that she did not find her twin staring into space, hurting and still distraught over losing Marc. How could she think of...?

  Belvia’s thoughts came to an abrupt end when Josy came into the kitchen, looking more upset than ever.

  ‘What’s the matter?’ she asked urgently.

  ‘He’s just rung!’

  ‘Who?’ Belvia asked, leading her over to a chair.

  ‘Latham T-Tavenner!’ Josy answered distractedly.

  Belvia’s breath caught; she had not anticipated this. Without haste she pulled up a kitchen chair close to her sister. ‘What did he want?’ she enquired as calmly as she could.

  ‘There’s a charity concert thing on in London tonight—some big affair. He’s got tickets and wondered if I’d like to go.’

  ‘You said no?’

  ‘How could I?’ Josy cried. ‘Not after Father lecturing me this morning. He’d go wild if I had to tell him I turned down a date with the man he’s breaking his neck to get in with.’

  ‘All right, all right, keep calm,’ Belvia instructed, seeing she was close to going to pieces. ‘So what did you tell him?’

  Josy took a shaky breath as she strove hard to recapture her self-control. ‘At first, when I knew who it was, I just couldn’t say a word. Then, quite pleasantly, he said, “You haven’t forgotten me already, I hope,” and I panicked a bit and—probably after what you said about you personally looking after him—I asked him if he wanted to speak to you.’

  I’ll bet that thrilled him, Belvia thought, but could see that Josy was in no mind to appreciate the humour of her thoughts. ‘So he politely told you no, and then asked you out. And, since you didn’t say no, you must have said yes,’ she prompted.

  ‘I must have done—he’s sending a car for me this evening,’ Josy gulped. ‘Oh, Bel, I can’t go! He’s so sure of himself, while I’m so unsure of just about absolutely everything—he positively terrifies me!’

  Belvia spent the next five minutes promising that her uncertainty about everything would pass, and that—while admittedly Josy had always been desperately shy—it must all be part and parcel of the dreadful loss she had suffered. ‘And,’ she ended, ‘if you’re so terrified of the man, then I wouldn’t dream of letting you go anywhere with him.’

  ‘You wouldn’t?’

  Belvia shook her head.

  ‘But—what about Father? I can’t let him down!’

  ‘Leave Father to me—I’ll ring him at his office.’

  Belvia got on the phone straight away. Her father was not in his office and her call was diverted to Vanessa Stanley, his secretary of the last five years; according to him, the fluffily pretty woman was as hard inside as she appeared soft outside. Though whether this was because he had chanced his arm with her, only to be told she preferred men nearer her own age—the late twenties, Belvia could only conjecture.

  ‘If you’d like to hold, I can go and find him,’ Vanessa offered. ‘Or shall I ask him to ring you?’

  ‘I’ll wait, shall I?’ The sooner she got something sorted out for Josy the better.

  The line went dead, and then, what seemed like an age later, her father, not taking kindly to being phoned at the office, was grumpily enquiring, ‘I hope the house isn’t on fire?’

  ‘Latham Tavenner has phoned asking Josy out tonight, and she can’t go!’ Belvia told him bluntly, her spirits dropping—from the sound of it, she had caught him at a bad time.

  ‘Why can’t she go?’ he wanted to know, equally bluntly.

  ‘Because he terrifies her, that’s why!’ she answered aggressively.

  ‘Rubbish!’

  ‘Well, she’s not going.’

  ‘Put her on the line.’

  Over her dead body. ‘She’s upstairs,’ Belvia lied.

  ‘Then you just tell her from me that we need his money. For God’s sake, all she’s got to do is go out with him—he won’t eat her.’

  ‘But she’s shy! You know she is. She’ll—’

  ‘Then it’s about time she grew out of it! Tell her from me that she’s to go and that’s an end to it!’ With that, in a fine rage, her father slammed down the phone.

  Stars above, how her mother had put up with him all those years...!

  ‘What did he say?’ Belvia was so angry that she had forgotten for a moment that Josy was in the same room.

  ‘I—er—caught him at the wrong moment,’ she had to confess, and thought fleetingly of suggesting again that she and Josy moved out. Then she saw that Josy looked near to tears, and it just wasn’t fair—the little love hadn’t been widowed four months!
It just wasn’t right that she should be put through this! ‘You’re not going,’ she stated unequivocally. ‘I’d sooner go myself.’ It would not come to that, of course. ‘Would you pass me the phone book?’

  ‘What are you going to do?’

  ‘You’re going to have a migraine.’

  Josy looked hopeful. Ten minutes later and she was looking downcast again. Belvia had got through to the Latham Tavenner building, and had even got through to his PA, but when she asked to speak to him, she had been politely, pleasantly, but firmly blocked.

  ‘May I take a message for you?’

  ‘I particularly wanted to speak to him personally.’

  ‘Who did you say was calling?’

  She hadn’t said. ‘My name is Fereday, Belvia Fereday,’ she replied, and that was when the PA had said Mr Tavenner was out of town all day—and Belvia did not believe it for a minute. Though since it was highly unlikely that he had told his PA he had dined in her company on Friday and had taken an instant dislike to her, she did not know quite why she did not believe that Latham Tavenner was out of town—she just didn’t. ‘Should I leave a message, will he get it today?’ she asked—her last hope.

  ‘I’m afraid I can’t promise that. Mr Tavenner sometimes rings through at the end of the day, but it’s by no means certain.’

  Belvia toyed with the idea of leaving a message that his date for that evening was off. But Josy would want her to give an excuse—and what excuse was there? On thinking about it, any migraine she invented could be better by this evening and, by speaking to Josy personally only a short while ago, he knew that she was not in bed with flu.

  ‘I’ll leave it, thank you,’ she said politely, added, ‘Goodbye’ and hung up. ‘Look.’ She addressed her twin seriously as she turned round to see that Josy had already realised the negative result of that phone call. ‘You don’t have to go!’

  A shuddering kind of sigh escaped Josy. ‘I do,’ she answered. ‘For Father’s sake, I have to.’

  ‘Oh, damn,’ Belvia groaned, and knew that, love him or hate him, when it came to the crunch, neither of them could let their father down. She let go a shaky breath too, loathing the whole of this as much as her sister did. Though when a glance at her showed that Josy seemed to be wilting where she sat, Belvia started to grow angry. This just was not on! ‘You’re not going!’ she stated. No argument.

  ‘I have to.’

  ‘No, you don’t. You—’

  ‘Let’s face it Bel,’ Josy interrupted, ‘we can’t get in touch with him, and he’s sending a car for me. By the time the chauffeur turns up without me, it will be too late for him to rustle up another female—date. That,’ she ended in a choked voice, ‘is certain to make it a foregone conclusion that he’ll want nothing to do with any of the Fereday family again. I have to k-keep my word—the Fereday word.’

  In the world of high finance a person’s word meant everything; Belvia knew that. Oh, stuff it, she fumed, and knew then that if the Fereday word was to be kept one of them had to go. It was with a great deal of reluctance that she realised it was time to put her money where her mouth was. Though Latham Tavenner was not going to like it any more than she was.

  ‘So,’ she smiled, ‘what am I going to wear?’

  The only thing Belvia was grateful for when, right on time that evening, a sleek limousine pulled up outside was that, as sometimes happened, her father was not yet home. It was taking all she had to go through with this—she could do without his objections and arguments.

  ‘Oh, Belvia, you look lovely!’ Josy exclaimed as she went with her to the door, admiring the look of her in her strapless sheath of white satin, her only jewellery a pair of pendant crystal ear-rings.

  Belvia needed to hear that. She was not shy nor timid where men were concerned, unlike her sister, but her insides were quaking. Lord above only knew how Josy would have been feeling had she been the one dressed in all her finery on her way out.

  That thought alone was sufficient for her to know she was doing the only thing possible. Josy could just not have coped. ‘Now, remember.’ She went through what they had decided to tell their father again. ‘If Father cuts up rough when he gets in, tell him you’ve got a tummy upset and that rather than have you throw up in the car, and in particular rather than break the Fereday word, I’ve gone in your stead.’

  Josy nodded solemnly, and Belvia, her long blonde hair swept upwards in an elegant style on top of her head, went out to where the chauffeur immediately sprang to open the rear door of the most splendid limousine. Belvia got in and, with a cheery wave to Josy hovering on the doorstep, they were away.

  What Latham Tavenner was going to say when he saw her she did not dare think, and by the time they were approaching the theatre, Belvia’s insides were churning so much that she felt the tummy upset Josy was to tell their father she was suffering with was about to be visited on her.

  There was no sign of Latham Tavenner when the limousine drew to a stop. The chauffeur got out and, with her insides in more of a knot than ever, Belvia prepared to get out too. Then the passenger door was opened—and suddenly it was not the chauffeur who stood there but, having appeared from nowhere, Latham Tavenner!

  Oh, heavens! He looked magnificent in evening clothes! But as he stood there and just stared at her, he was clearly quite unable to believe his eyes. Belvia opened her mouth, her rehearsed excuses at the ready, but, with her stomach churning and her heart banging away against her ribs, all at once she could not remember a word of them.

  Which left her to do the only thing possible. She dipped her head to avoid looking at him, and stepped elegantly out of the streamlined vehicle.

  The next second she was standing close up to the athletically built financier—and would not have been at all surprised had he pushed her back into the limousine and instructed the chauffeur to deliver her back whence she came. For it was all there as he recovered from seeing that the wrong Fereday twin had turned up and snarled, ‘I invited your sister, not you!’

  His tone was what she needed—it nettled her. ‘We—’ she began snappily—and that was as far as she got. For abruptly, not giving her chance to say another word, Latham Tavenner caught hold of her by her upper arm. Though not, she swiftly realised, to push her back in the vehicle, but to turn her in the direction which they were to go.

  ‘We’re holding everything up!’ he grunted, and, plainly irritated to find himself lumbered with her for the evening, he bent and closed the passenger door, and as the vehicle slid away and another pulled up in its place Belvia saw that cars were queuing up to drop off their passengers. The next she knew was that the firm hand was on her upper arm again and, while flash cameras seemed to be going off everywhere, Latham Tavenner was instructing her tersely—through a seemingly smiling mouth—to ‘Try and look as though you’re enjoying yourself—you’ll probably see the result in the paper tomorrow.’

  Belvia smiled and hated him, and walked with him into the theatre and into the crowded foyer, and was glad with all her heart that it was she who was there and not her twin. Aside from having this brute of a man steering her around, Josy would never have been able to cope with the attention of the Press and television cameras, even if well aware that it was more her escort they would be interested in than her. Nor, as Latham was halted here and there by people he knew and exchanged a few words, and occasionally introduced her to someone, could Josy have coped with that either.

  To Belvia’s surprise, however, while she knew without doubt that her escort must be furious to find himself having to put up with her, he was unfailingly polite to her in front of other people. Though she guessed it was only a matter of time before she felt the whiplash edge of his tongue.

  They had made it to their seats, with about five minutes to go before the performance was about to start, when Belvia gave up all pretence of appearing intent on the programme he had purchased for her—and decided to get in first. Impulsively she turned to look at him. Though when he, sensing her moveme
nt, turned to look at her too and stared arrogantly down at her the words died in her throat.

  But it was important for her father that she get through to him, so, ‘I apologise that I’m here and not Josy...’ she managed—ye gods, arrogant did not begin to cover it as one superior eyebrow went aloft! ‘But when Josy was taken suddenly ill...’ She ploughed doggedly on.

  ‘Your sister is ill?’

  ‘A twenty-four hour bug,’ she lied brazenly. ‘It was important, we both felt, that the word of a Fereday should be kept. So...’ She let the fact that she was there finish the sentence for her, and was just congratulating herself that she had assured him that he could rely on a Fereday when she saw his arrogant look change to one of amazement.

  ‘You thought I’d be inconsolable if the car arrived empty?’ he queried incredulously.

  ‘No, of course not. But—’

  ‘Oh, shut up,’ he grated, and for the first time in her life she came within an ace of punching a man on the nose.

  ‘Bastard!’ she muttered, and the lights in the theatre went down—and she would have sworn she heard his smothered laugh! Actually heard him laugh! As if he had heard her muttered expletive—as if she had amused him!

  Belvia, while looking at the stage, saw and heard nothing of the first half-hour of the concert. Good grief, what was happening to her? She had never called anyone a bastard in her life! And what was more, if asked, she would have said she never would. The word was just not part of her vocabulary—or so she would have said.

  It was him, his fault! He had goaded her to it. Well, she would be hanged if she would apologise. Come to think of it, she had never thought she would want to set about anyone physically either. But that too was his fault! Who the devil did he think he was, telling her to shut up? Infuriating swine!

  By the time the interval arrived, Belvia had cooled down sufficiently to realise that, although it would irk her beyond measure, for her father’s sake she was going to have to make amends for that ‘bastard’.

  She hoped, in a way, that she had amused Latham Tavenner, come to think of it. Because, if he was in a good humour, she might be able to get in a tactful word with which to ask him to leave Josy alone.