Shadow Marriage. Penny Jordan

just checking.’ But the smile he gave her was understanding and friendly. ‘Look, Paul will be back in a second, and I’d better tell you before he comes. We’ve got a new director…’ He paused and Sarah felt her heartstrings jerk and tighten indefinably with tension.

      ‘I thought Guy was going to direct, himself?’ she protested shakily.

      ‘So he was,’ Dale agreed bitterly, ‘and if I’d known any different, I wouldn’t have taken the damned part, but it seems something went wrong on his last film, and he’s having to re-shoot several scenes. The backers demanded it, and because everything was set up here, and any delay now would mean waiting until next summer, we’ve got ourselves a new director.’ He glanced at her as Paul closed the car boot and started walking towards them.

      ‘It’s Ben, Sarah,’ he told her quickly, his hand going to her arm as he saw her sway slightly. ‘Look, I know what a shock this must be to you, that’s why I wanted to be the first to tell you. Knowing that bastard, he’d just let you walk right into him without any preparation at all. You must have done quite well out of him when the divorce went through.’ He gave her an oblique look. ‘I mean, by that time he’d have been working in America; he went there right after Shakespeare finished, didn’t he?’

      Sarah made no response—she wasn’t capable of doing so. Ben directing Richard—she couldn’t believe it! She didn’t want to believe it. Paul came to join them, and if he found anything strange in her pale face and strained features, he was too polite to say so, simply opening the front passenger door of the car for her when she reached it, and helping her with her seat-belt, causing Dale to raise an eyebrow and comment that he obviously believed in working himself into the right mood for a part. ‘Not that you’ll find Sarah a walk-over,’ he added, grinning at Sarah encouragingly. ‘She knows all about the dangers of getting involved with her leading men, don’t you, sweetling?’

      Sarah knew that Dale was only teasing her, but she wished he had been a little more reticent when she saw the way Paul looked at her. ‘Some of them have caused problems,’ she agreed lightly.

      ‘And in case you think she means me, Sarah and I have always had a very special relationship, haven’t we?’ Dale chipped in.

      They had in many ways, and Sarah grinned back at him, trying to banish from her mind the knowledge that soon she was going to come face to face with Ben, Ben whose acting ability in Shakespeare had been so greatly acclaimed, but who had gone on to find equal fame in directing and producing. She could vouch personally for his acting ability; she had had first-hand personal experience of it. She smiled rather bitterly to herself. God, how naïve she had been! Dale had been a good friend to her then. If it hadn’t been for him she would never have known the truth; never known how cruelly Ben had deceived her. She had thought he loved her as she loved him while all she had really been to him was the fulfilment of a bet. Even now to think about what had happened brought her flesh out in goose-bumps, shivering with distaste and despair. Dale, frantic when he learned that Ben had married her, had told her the truth, wanting to protect her; Ben with whom she was so crazily and deeply in love had married her for no other reason than simply to win a bet. It had started in complete innocence, on Dale’s part at least. When the three of them started to film Shakespeare, Dale had bet Ben a thousand pounds that he would be the first one to get her into bed, and Ben had accepted the wager. When he had told her of his own part in what had happened Dale had had the grace to be very shamefaced, but he had not known her then; she had just been another very pretty girl and the bet had been made half in jest, but already there had been a certain competitiveness between himself and Ben; Dale being the more acclaimed and well-known actor of the two, and Ben had obviously determined that this time he was going to be the winner.

      Sarah had had no idea about the bet between her two fellow actors; no idea of what was intended, and while from the very first she had been wary of Dale’s outrageously flirtatious manner and had kept him at bay, she had had no defences against her own feelings for Benedict, falling in love with him almost at first sight, allowing herself to become so bemused by him and their roles that she had permitted him to make love to her, and she had thought when she had refused to allow him to make their relationship public that his proposal of marriage stemmed from his desire and love for her, not realising that he simply saw it as the only way he could force Dale to acknowledge that he was the winner of their bet.

      Dale had been enjoying a brief break away from the set when it happened and only returned the day they were married by special licence, less than a week after Ben had made love to her. Dale had got slightly drunk at the post-wedding party given by the cast, and he had followed up to her hotel room when she went to get changed, to tell her the truth. Sarah had still been in tears when they heard Ben outside the door, and it had been then that Dale had whispered to her that they would turn the tables on him, taking her in his arms and wrenching unfastened the front of her dress so that Ben had discovered them together locked in what appeared to be an intensely passionate embrace, Dale’s cool comment that he had after all lost, as Sarah preferred him, driving Benedict from the room and ultimately from her life. She could still vividly remember the climax to their wedding party when Ben very obviously drunk, had announced to the assembled cast that she and Dale were lovers.

      She thought guiltily about Dale’s comment on their divorce. She always described herself as ‘divorced’, but the plain facts of the matter were that she was still, legally at least, married to Ben. They had been married in England, where the law had been and still was that only an uncontested divorce could be obtained after three years. Where both parties were not in agreement the waiting period was five years, and it was still only three and a half years since they had been married. Why Ben refused to give her a divorce she had no idea, unless it was because he feared she might make some sort of financial claim on him. Either that, or he simply wanted to punish her. But she wasn’t the guilty party. She had married him because she was deeply in love with him and had believed he felt the same way about her. Their love scenes together had possessed an intensity, a luminosity which had far transcended even the most gifted acting, or so she had believed, and driven half mad by her love for him and the constant exposure to the sensuality imposed on them by their roles, she had abandoned all her dearly held beliefs—and herself—to him.

      The screech of the car brakes jerked her back to the present. Dale had always been an aggressive driver and in that regard he didn’t seem to have changed.

      ‘I’ve just been telling Sarah about our new director,’ he commented to Paul. ‘Unlike me,’ he added for Sarah’s benefit, ‘Paul likes our new director. Of course he isn’t the only one. Gina, my sweetly innocent Berengaria, had made her preferences in that quarter very well known. Of course Ben’s playing it cool—he can hardly do otherwise since Gina’s lover is one of our most influential backers. He’s having quite a hard time of it trying to keep Gina at bay without offending her, but then he always was adept at double-dealing. Still, you’re going to come as quite a shock to him.’

      From the back seat Paul interrupted gently, ‘A very pleasant one, I’m sure, Sarah. It’s just that there’s been a change on the continuity side as well, and the girl who replaced Ellen, our first continuity girl, must have forgotten to take Rachel Ware’s name out and insert yours in the casting list.’

      Sarah’s heart sank even further. She hadn’t realised that someone else had actually been cast for the part ahead of her. ‘Come on, Dale,’ Paul protested. ‘You’re frightening the life out of Sarah! Ben won’t eat you,’ he told her. ‘Oh, he’s demanding all right—knows exactly what he wants from the cast and makes sure he gets it, but…’

      ‘Sarah knows all about Ben, Paul,’ Dale interrupted, his eyes leaving the road for a second as he turned his head to frown at the man in the back seat. ‘We both worked with him on Shakespeare. You’ll have to forgive Paul’s ignorance,’ he added to Sarah. ‘He’s come rather late to the acting scene. He was training to be a chartered accountant when he suddenly got the bug.’

      ‘I qualified, too,’ Paul put in with a disarming grin. ‘I had a girl-friend who was a model, and she got me some ad work, which is how I got started.’

      ‘Yes,