That Kind Of Man. Sharon Kendrick

      ‘Perhaps you would like to apologise to her before you leave?’ he suggested stonily.

      ‘Apologise?’ Jemima’s voice was shrill and she shot Abigail a malicious stare. ‘Apologise for what? For stating the truth? Come on, darling—everyone knows that Abigail and Orlando had a very open marriage. In the truest sense of the word,’ she finished, with a suggestive little pursing of her big, glossy lips.

      For a moment Abigail met Nick’s appalled eyes over the top of Jemima’s head. She saw the bleak, disbelieving question written there, before his mouth thinned with distaste and he said, quite firmly, ‘The party’s over, folks, I’m afraid. And I’d like you all to leave.’

      Jemima was still staring at Abigail, but the spite which was spitting from her eyes had now evolved into pure jealousy. ‘Sure we’ll leave,’ she drawled. ‘And we wish you all the luck in the world—you’ll need it! Orlando always said that going to bed with Abigail was like sleeping with an ice-cube!’

      Abigail started as though she had been stung.

      Like a child trying desperately not to cry, she crammed her fist into her mouth, as if to halt the bitter words of denial. She wanted to move, to run, to hide, to scream, but she felt powerless and heavy, as though the blood in her veins had turned to stone. She was trapped. Paralysed with fear. She made a tiny cry at the back of her throat, like that of a wounded animal, and she saw, from his look of fury, that Nick had heard the pitiful little sound.

      ‘Get out of here!’ he snarled, and the anger on his face subdued every person present. He took a slow, menacing step towards Jemima, who was staring up at him in horror, as if unused to the full brunt of a truly masculine rage.

      ‘Yes, you,’ he emphasised to Jemima in disgust, before turning to face the rest of them. ‘And all you others! You greedy, grasping pathetic bunch of parasites! You can take your nasty little stories and your freeloading ways and your sordid little lives and get out of here. Now!’

      The strangely subdued gathering needed no second bidding. Glasses were hastily put down and they began to scuttle out, like children chastised by the headmaster.

      It took about five minutes for the room to empty, leaving only the priest and two white-aproned waitresses, who stood looking up at Nick with a kind of nervous respect. The priest hastily said a polite farewell and left.

      ‘Did you mean for us to go, too, sir?’ one of the waitresses asked tentatively.

      And Abigail then witnessed the most astonishing transformation.

      Nick turned to the two women with a wide, apologetic smile and a rueful shake of his dark head. ‘No, of course I didn’t mean for you to go, too,’ he said. ‘And I’m sorry if you thought I did. I just thought that things had gone quite far enough—’

      ‘Oh, they had, sir!’ piped up the other. ‘They had! And you did absolutely right to say what you did! We was just saying in the kitchen—never heard language like it in our lives! Especially at a funeral! Absolutely disgusting!’

      Nick glanced over at Abigail, who was still sitting motionless on the stiff-backed chair. ‘I just didn’t want Mrs Howard distressed any more—’

      And suddenly Abigail could bear it no longer. Was Nick an actor, just like Orlando? Able to switch his emotions on and off at will, like a tap? One minute ejecting forty people from a room by the sheer force of his will and the next oozing so much charm that he had two middle-aged women positively eating out of his hand.

      Jumping out of the chair, she stumbled towards the door. The older of the two waitresses tried to halt her.

      ‘Miss—’

      The careworn arm she placed on Abigail’s arm was comforting and, Abigail supposed, reassuring, too. But she was still too disturbed to do anything other than shake it off distractedly. ‘Let me go,’ she pleaded, on a harsh gasp which seemed to be torn from somewhere deep inside her. ‘Please! Let me go!’

      ‘It’s all right,’ she heard Nick tell them, in a clipped and decisive voice. ‘Mrs Howard will be fine. Please let her go.’

CHAPTER THREE

      ABIGAIL ran out of the room and directly up the staircase which rose from the inner hall, her laboured breathing sounding loud and distorted in the almost eerie silence which had settled on the house.

      She did not go to hers and Orlando’s bedroom; she had not slept there for months.

      But it was a magnificent room, overlooking the house’s greatest glory—its eighteenth-century garden—and Abigail had half thought that she might move back in, once the policeman had told her that Orlando was never coming home again.

      But now she knew that nothing would ever entice her to sleep in that room again.

      Instead, she made her way to the East Room, whose curtains were drawn almost shut, leaving only a chink in the heavy brocade, giving the bedroom a gloomy half-light which suited her mood perfectly.

      With a sense of relief, she kicked off the spindly high-heeled shoes, unbuttoned her black jacket and lay down on the wide four-poster bed, staring sightlessly up at the ceiling.

      In the distance she could hear the faint chink of china and glass being clattered, and supposed that the waitresses were clearing away the debris from the food.