Indiscretions (16 page)

After all, thought Venetia inspecting the kitchen, it’s my job, not hers. Still, the office staff in these places did rather treat you as though you were the scullery maid and they the young ladies of the big house! The directors for whom she cooked were usually all right—they either
noticed her and smiled appreciatively, or they made a point of not noticing her while they consumed their lunch and discussed business. Either way was all right with Venetia—so long as they liked her food and paid her, and best of all, if they asked her, through their secretaries, of course, to cook for their weekly directors’ lunches on a regular basis so that she could fill up the sparse pages of her engagement book several weeks ahead and know that she would be sure of some income that month.

Work hadn’t been as easy to find as she had expected. Schools seemed to be turning out young ladies with cordon bleu diplomas by the score, and every ad in
The Times
attracted dozens of applicants who were often more experienced than Venetia. Through the Lancasters and her own circle of friends she had managed to pick up a job here and there—catering a christening party or an anniversary dinner, and through an agency she had ventured into the occasional weekend house party, or emergency dinner—usually when the regular cook had walked out at the last minute.

Most times Venetia didn’t blame them. The attitude of her temporary employers was to act as if she were some irritating servant who should know where everything in the strange kitchen was kept, and should get on with it—fast, without bothering them! Most of the women had proved demanding and difficult to please. The men saw her in quite a different light, as a more decorative kitchen accessory to be plied with gin and tonic while the wife was taking her bath, then an arm around the shoulders and a pat on the bottom and a suggestion of a rendezvous for “a really good meal … get you out of the kitchen, hah hah, then afterward …” It appeared to be a hazard of her profession and it annoyed her, though so far she’d managed to keep her suitors at bay, and she’d also managed to be quite polite about it because she needed the money. But it would have felt so satisfying to walk out
and leave them to explain to their wives just why their dinner party was ruined.

Unpacking her hampers, she produced a delicate terrine of salmon in aspic which she arranged on a bed of fresh cress, garnishing it with slices of lemon and cucumber. The middle-aged directors she cooked for liked simple food, not too fattening but with good ingredients, and the rack of lamb, which she had covered with a mixture of herbs, fine mustard, and bread crumbs and would cook until just pink, had proved a safe bet. She tried always to keep the pudding light—a lemon sorbet with wafer-thin curls of fresh almond biscuits that she had made that morning, or a fresh fruit salad and an interesting cheeseboard. The wines came from the directors’ own cellars, so she had no need to bother about those, and with a cold hors d’oeuvre and pudding she had only the main dish and vegetables to cook. These were shopped for the day before and prepared by her in the Lancasters’ kitchen at seven-thirty in the morning. She was usually finished by ten with everything packed into her hampers and ready to go. There’d just be time for a quick bath, and then, in her working outfit of a simple skirt and shirt, not forgetting her striped apron, big enough to wrap around her twice and tie at the front, she’d load the car and be on her way.

After switching on the oven to low she made a pot of coffee. Twelve o’clock. With a bit of luck the women who did the tables and cleared the dishes would be here soon: meanwhile there was just time to tidy herself up.

Venetia hurried down the corridor in search of the ladies’ room, finding it without the help of the indifferent receptionist, who was involved in some apparently intriguing phone call. The mirror showed that she wasn’t
too
bedraggled—her hair and her boots had dried and hopefully she looked both neat and efficient. Tying back her shining blond hair tightly with a scrap of blue ribbon
she searched her bag for a lipstick. Morgan’s card was tucked in the flap where she’d placed it that morning. A hapless-looking camel leered at her from a rectangle of desert in Abu Dhabi, and with a smile she reread Morgan’s message on the back:
Reliable, efficient, cost effective, rustproof … who needs a car anyway? Miss you
.

He’d taken to dropping her a card from each new place he went, usually with a hastily scribbled
Wish you were here
, or even
Love and kisses
. In the half-dozen times they’d met since she had returned from California a couple of months ago, she’d found herself liking Morgan McBain more and more. He was so easy to talk to, he listened to her problems, and he asked the right questions—the sort of questions that made her see the answers for herself. And, too, she had to admit that it felt good being on the arm of such an attractive man; she’d noticed the way other girls looked at him. Kate Lancaster thought he was
dazzling!
Morgan exuded that special American confidence of power—she had the feeling that he could take care of any situation, just the way he had that awful night three months ago. Of course, she was infinitely grateful to Morgan and his father for that.

And she liked it when he kissed her. In fact, she liked it a lot, and she thought he did too. Why, then, did he do no more than kiss her? Didn’t he find her attractive enough? Maybe there was something about her that turned him off. Venetia gazed anxiously again at her reflection in the wall-high mirrors in the ladies’ room that contrived to make even her five-foot-nine-inch slenderness appear squat. She was quite pretty—she knew she was really, but sometimes, inside, she didn’t feel very confident of her looks. And Morgan hadn’t suggested anything other than kisses.…

Oh, my God, look at the time! Stuffing his card back into her bag she hurried back to her kitchen.

“I’ve done the table, miss,” the waitress’s cheerful voice greeted her.

“Oh! Oh, right, thanks so-o much. I’ve made coffee, if you’d like a cup.” Venetia pushed the roast into the oven and slammed the door.

“Thanks, miss.” The comfortable, middle-aged Cockney woman helped herself to a cup and stared at Venetia intently. “I
know
your face,” she said. “You look a lot like someone on the telly.”

“Really.” Venetia smiled and busied herself with the vegetables.

“I’ve got it! You look like the film star, the one that got herself killed in Hollywood a few months back—Jenny. Beautiful, she was, too. I used to wish I looked like her when I was a girl. Wait a minute … no, you couldn’t be, not being here and doing the cooking and all that—I mean, you couldn’t be Jenny Haven’s daughter … but I saw you on the telly!”

Venetia smiled shyly. She had thought that once the funeral was over, the attention of the press would be diverted to the next scandal or romance, but reporters had hovered outside the Lancaster mews house for weeks and she’d found herself surprised by photographers when she was shopping in the supermarket or taking the dogs for a walk. She’d even had requests for interviews and had been offered quite a large sum of money by two different rival newspapers for “the true story,” which of course she had ignored. There’d even been a mention in Nigel Dempster’s column in the
Mail
with a blurred photograph of her with Morgan, getting into a taxi.

“Well, I never—fancy meeting you here, cooking lunch for
that
lot!” The woman’s face lit with sudden understanding. “Then that’s what the phone call was! Samantha in reception said that the rich American, McBain, was on the phone—calling from a foreign country he was, too, asking for Venetia Haven. So of course Miss
Smarty out there tells him there’s no such person works here. Oh, she was all smiles this time. He’ll have been calling for you, love. Better go and ask her. I think he said he’d call back because he was sure you were expected.” She gulped her coffee and smiled at Venetia, delighted to be the bringer of good news, and she knew it was good by the way the girl’s eyes brightened. Really pretty she was, just like her mum.

Morgan? Morgan was calling her
here?
“But how did he know …?” Even as she said it she knew how silly it was; of course Morgan would have called home and they would have given him the number. It must be urgent if he couldn’t wait until she got home.

“Thank you, thanks a lot,” she said, heading for the door. “Oh—could you just keep an eye on the lamb in the oven for me? I won’t be long.”

Samantha at reception sipped the pink high-protein milk drink that was her lunch and glanced at Venetia with supercilious boredom.

“For you?” Her voice was faintly scornful; obviously the girl was mistaken. The McBains of this world didn’t make urgent telephone calls from Geneva to lunchtime cooks.

“I’m Venetia Haven. Didn’t he ask for me?”

Samantha’s gaze fastened on Venetia for the first time. My God, of course. She was
that
Haven girl, why hadn’t she noticed it right off? The phone rang again, purring quietly in this hushed office, and she answered automatically.

“Blakemore and Honeywell. Oh, yes, Mr. McBain. Yes, you’re quite right, Mr. McBain. She’s here now, I’ll put her on the line.” Handing the phone to Venetia she sipped her lunch and pretended not to listen.

“Morgan?” Venetia cradled the phone under her chin, speaking softly. “Yes, yes, of course I’m pleased you called, but why here? Is it urgent? It is? Yes of course I
ski.… When? Oh, Morgan, it sounds lovely, but I’m not sure I can … you’re snowbound—how romantic! Yes, of course I’d like to be with you, but I have to work, Morgan.… Oh, well, perhaps I could …”

Her laugh rang through the silent offices and Samantha glanced at her enviously.

“All right, then, we’ll talk about it when you get here … you’ll talk me into it?” She laughed again. “Okay. Yes. I’ll wait for your call … yes … me too … ’Bye.”

Venetia put down the phone and drifted happily back toward the kitchen, followed by Samantha’s envious stare.

The Rolls from the Palace Hotel whisked them through the snowy streets of St. Moritz, up the fir-dotted slope to the sprawling, gabled building that looked, thought Venetia, like a chalet that had just kept on growing. The manager was waiting to greet them personally and to assure them that his staff would see to their every comfort. “There’s good snow,” he informed them, “and more to come—too much, perhaps. But if we are snowed in, Mademoiselle will find plenty to do at the Palace—you can ice-skate on our own rink, swim in our pool, exercise in our fitness room, play squash, bridge, dance—maybe a little shopping.…”

“Forget it,” laughed Morgan, “Mademoiselle is going up those mountains and back down again as fast as she can. I have a ten-pound bet that I’ll beat her—best of five runs.”

“What I didn’t tell you,” Venetia informed him as they headed for the elevator, “is that I first skied here when I was three years old—I came with my mother, and Jenny was quite an athlete. She was a superb skier, and she saw I had the best tuition. Even if you beat me on speed,
Morgan McBain—and I’m not admitting that you will—you’ll never top my style.”

“You’re probably right,” he replied with a grin. “My training consisted of a half hour when my father showed me the basic moves. Then he hoisted me into a chair lift to the top of the slope and said, ‘Follow me.’ I had no choice—if I wanted to go down that mountain I had to follow him. So I went. And I loved it—even though I must have fallen a dozen times. He never helped me up, just waited and called instructions to me on how to do it.”

As they followed the manager down the corridor Venetia imagined the little boy scared and alone at the top of the white slopes; it must have looked so steep to him.

“He sounds like a very tough father,” she commented.

“He was—and is. But he’s still the best. He brought me up with no mother around and he did it the only way he knew how.” Morgan smiled wryly. “He was determined no son of his was going to grow up soft—money was for good food and a good education, not for pampering.”

Venetia privately thought Fitz McBain sounded like a tough old tyrant, but she kept her opinion to herself.

“Your room, mademoiselle.” The manager opened the door with a flourish.

It was spacious and sunny and filled with flowers. Two discreet single beds awaited her choice, and Venetia’s eyes met Morgan’s inquiringly.

“I’m right next door,” he explained. “I’ll give you fifteen minutes to get into your gear and we’re off, okay?”

“Lunch is being served in the restaurant, sir,” suggested the manager, following Morgan to the door.

Venetia laughed as she heard his reply. “Lunch? No time for that—we’ll grab a bite later at one of the cafés on the mountain.”

When Morgan wanted to do something, he did it immediately!
He’d arrived on one plane in London, talked her into abandoning her quest for work, and scooped her off to Switzerland on the next flight. Vennie eyed the twin beds warily. Of course she’d expected to have her own room—Morgan would never be so presumptuous or so indiscreet as to book them into the same room—and anyway things hadn’t got to that point between them. Yet. She sat on the edge of the bed, dragged off her boots and jeans, and climbed into a pair of thermal longjohns, a cotton polo-neck shirt, and her ski suit. She pulled on the shaggy fur boots, clipped her bum bag to her belt, grabbed her goggles, and made for the door. Morgan was outside, hand raised ready to knock. “Beat you,” he said triumphantly. “Round one goes to me.”

“I thought this competition was on the slopes,” complained Venetia.

“It is, it is … just you watch out, Miss Venetia Haven,” he warned. “You’re in for a tough time!”

Venetia hadn’t remembered that it felt so wonderful. They’d begun on a red run—just to get their ski legs, Morgan had said, though privately she had thought that he was being kind to her and allowing her to chicken out if she felt the black runs would be too much. And they might have, she admitted, unclipping the bindings and shouldering her skis; her knees were trembling from the unaccustomed strain. But it was stupendous: the snow was perfect, the sky was blue with just a ridge of cloud coming up on the horizon, and the sun was hot. Meanwhile, she was here at the foot of the piste waiting for Morgan, who had taken two falls at the top of the slope and had lagged behind considerably. She’d beaten him by at least three minutes, she calculated as he swerved to a stop next to her.