Jake Howard's Wife. Anne Mather

he responded expressionlessly.

      ‘Oh! Good.’ Helen was forced to look at him again, and he saw the troubled expression in her eyes. ‘I—er—I'm sorry I couldn't be here when you got back. I—I had an appointment.'

      ‘So I heard,’ he said, swallowing the remainder of his Scotch.

      Helen coloured. ‘Yes, well, I'm sure Mrs Latimer provided you with an excellent dinner—'

      ‘To hell with Mrs Latimer!’ Jake's anger exploded.

      Helen clenched her hands together. ‘Please, Jake—'

      ‘Please be damned!’ Jake tossed the exquisitely delicate whisky glass in his hand. ‘Where the hell do you think you've been?'

      Helen swallowed with apparent difficulty. ‘Mrs Latimer must have told you—'

      ‘I'm not interested in what Mrs Latimer said!’ snapped Jake. ‘I want to know where you've been and with whom?'

      Helen made a helpless gesture. ‘I've been to a party—with Keith Mannering.'

      Jake uttered an ugly expletive and Helen winced at his language. ‘You bitch!’ he swore angrily. ‘I don't know how you have the nerve to stand there and tell me you've been out with another man, let alone Mannering!'

      Helen squared her shoulders with an effort. ‘Why not?’ she asked succinctly.

      Jake narrowed his eyes, thrusting his empty glass on to the mantelshelf. ‘Why not?’ he demanded fiercely. ‘What do you mean, why not? You're my wife; that should be answer enough!'

      Helen toyed with the exquisite diamond ring which Jake had bought her on their engagement; her eyes were guarded and he suddenly wondered what she was thinking.

      ‘And you?’ she said quietly. ‘Is that answer enough for you too? That you're my husband?'

      Jake's expression was grim. ‘What the hell do you mean by that?'

      Helen raised her dark eyebrows. ‘I should have thought it was obvious. Do you think I am allowed to remain unaware of your conquests? Do you think I'm not constantly being sickened by so-called well-meaning confidences?'

      Jake raked a hand through his thick hair. ‘My God!’ he muttered violently, turning away to stare unseeingly into the electric flames. ‘And you think my—actions—entitle you to act likewise, is that it?'

      ‘No!’ The brief remonstrance was sufficient to cause him to swing round and face her again. ‘No,’ she repeated heatedly. ‘I'm not like you! I'm not an animal giving in to every physical need of its body—'

      ‘And I am?’ His tone was ominous.

      Helen flushed scarlet. ‘I honestly don't care what you are,’ she retorted, biting her lips. ‘But I can see no grounds for you to complain about my behaviour. So far as I'm concerned, these last three months have been the last straw! I see no reason for me to cut myself off from my friends just because I'm married to you—'

      ‘Might I remind you that your so-called friends soon deserted you after your father's accident?’ observed Jake cuttingly.

      Helen winced as though he had struck her. ‘That's a rotten thing to say!’ she burst out tremulously.

      Jake shrugged his broad shoulders, surveying her appraisingly. It was the first time he had seen her so animated. Normally he was unable to arouse more than a flicker of emotion in her controlled features.

      ‘But true, nevertheless,’ he remarked now, his eyes never wavering from her face. ‘Now what are you going to tell me? That I'm uncouth and a cad for mentioning such a thing? That I haven't the manners of that priggish lout, Mannering?'

      Helen allowed her long lashes to veil her eyes. ‘Keith is a gentleman,’ she replied tersely.

      Jake uttered a contemptuous snort. ‘Oh, he is? And what is your definition of a gentleman, I wonder? Someone who never eats peas with his knife? Or maybe someone who only makes love in his pyjamas, never in the raw!'

      Helen took a deep breath. ‘You're crude!’ she exclaimed distastefully. ‘I'm going to bed.'

      Jake crossed the room to her side in an instant, moving swiftly and lithely for such a big man. ‘Oh, are you?’ His mouth tightened. ‘You'll go to bed when I say and not before.'

      Helen lifted her head incredulously. ‘Really, Jake, this is the twentieth century. You're not my keeper! You can't make me do what you want all the time.'

      ‘Can't I?’ His lips twisted. ‘I shouldn't bank on that if I were you.'

      Helen moved towards the door, but he was in her path. ‘I don't like this conversation, Jake. I wish it had never taken place.'

      ‘So do I!’ he snapped sharply. ‘Might I remind you that your absence here this evening was responsible.'

      Helen sighed. ‘I'm tired. Can't we discuss this in the morning? We'll both be more—well—reasonable, then.'

      ‘What is that supposed to mean?’ Jake glared at her.

      Helen made a helpless gesture towards the glass on the mantelpiece and then seemed to regret the impulse. ‘It doesn't mean anything,’ she denied uncomfortably.

      ‘You think I'm drunk, is that it?’ Jake made a derisive grimace. ‘Dear God, you've never seen me drunk, Helen!'

      ‘Nor should I want to.’ Helen quivered. ‘Am I to be allowed to go to bed?'

      Jake stepped aside abruptly, but his jaw was taut. ‘Aren't you interested in what I've brought you back from the States? I thought that was why you married me—to retain the material benefits of life!'

      Helen looked as though she would have liked to have struck his sardonic face, but she did nothing except clench her fists. Then she walked out of the lounge, across the blue and gold hall with its crystal chandelier casting prisms of light on her pale hair, and up the stairs to her room.

      Jake watched her go with impotent fury and then walked back into the lounge, slamming the door behind him. When he finally sought his bed the newly opened bottle of Scotch was three parts gone…

CHAPTER TWO

      HELEN applied a pale green eyeshadow to her lids, aware of an unusual feeling of apprehension when she considered the evening ahead. They were going to a reception at the embassy of one of the newly developing African states and it would be the first evening they had spent together since Jake's return from the United States almost a week ago.

      He had been fully occupied since his return, she knew that from the long hours the lights burned in his study, but even so it had been a strange and uncomfortable week when their attitudes towards one another had undergone a subtle change.

      Before Jake's trip to America they had talked quite a lot, mostly about business, she had to admit, but their relationship had never been strained as it was now. And it was all her fault. Or was it?

      She dropped the applicator she had been using impatiently and studied her reflection critically in the mirror of the dressing table. Surely it was unreasonable of Jake to expect her to abandon people she had known since she was a child in favour of his associates and their wives. Granted some of his associates, Giles St John, for example, were friends of hers, too, but there were others, people Jake despised because of their attitudes, whom she found perfectly acceptable.

      She looked round for the mascara and began to stroke it on to her already dark lashes. Keith Mannering came into this latter category. She had known Keith for years, and once she had expected to marry him. But that was all in the past now. Now they were just good friends, and it was contemptible that Jake should attempt to suggest otherwise.

      She smoothed a colourless lustre over her lips, a look of strain momentarily touching the