Challenge Page 3

  `And Leandro Volpi does that, I agree,' Jessica acknowledged drily. 'With dedication.'

  There was a short knock at the door, which opened to reveal a smiling man in white, sporting epaulettes and gold buttons on his jacket along with a small shield-shaped embroidered motif on his breast pocket.

  `Thank you, Enrico,' said Jessica, standing up to take from him the silver tray he was carrying.

  `It is nothing, signorina.' He smiled. 'Can I get you anything else? Tea, perhaps? Later? You will be joining Signor Leandro for cocktails in the stern saloon at eight?'

  Although it was phrased as a question, it sounded more like a piece of advice, Sue thought. She looked at the steward curiously. Had Jessica given offence by

  turning down the family invitations? Or by failing to turn up to meals? Sue knew that when Jessica was working she would ignore all distractions, including the necessity to be gracious to clients, and was quite likely to lose all sense of time.

  Her suspicions were confirmed when Jessica made a face.

  `You mean, will I turn up of my own free will, or have Signor Leandro come to fetch me?' she interpreted ruefully. 'All right, Enrico, I won't forget. Miss York,' she added with a gleam of fun, 'is here to remind me of things like that. It's part of her job. You can stand down now.'

  He smiled back but said gently, 'The signor was most anxious that you should attend, signorina.'

  He closed the door behind him on Jessica's sigh. `Trouble?' asked Sue, scenting it.

  Jessica was pouring a faintly greenish wine into a long-stemmed Venetian glass.

  `Here you are,' she said, not answering. 'They tell me Ligurian wine doesn't travel—and I certainly never remember having it before—but ice-cold like this, it's nectar.'

  `Trouble, Jessica?' persisted Sue, accepting the wine but refusing to be deflected. 'With the gorgeous nephew and heir, maybe?'

  Jessica looked slightly guilty. 'I have locked horns with the Body Beautiful once or twice,' she admitted.

  Sue sighed. 'To the extent that he came and dragged you away from your desk kicking and screaming?' she asked wearily. 'Marched you bodily into a cocktail party to meet his associates?'

  Jessica looked startled. 'Something like that,' she agreed. 'You're much too quick. How did you guess?'

  `It wasn't too difficult. I've had to do much the same thing myself once or twice,' Sue observed in a dry tone.

  `Oh.' Jessica began to look amused. 'Yes, I suppose you have.' She wrinkled her nose. 'But at least in your

  case the party was full of people with whom I had business. The Body Beautiful just dumped, me in the middle of a stampede of Riviera play people. I didn't see the point of it.'

  Sue sighed again. She liked Jessica. She admired her work, enjoyed her company, and trusted her as she trusted few friends. She had no opinion, however, of her tact and diplomacy.

  `I suppose you said so?' she asked in a resigned tone.

  `Well, I did get rather cross.' Jessica flashed her an amused glance. `Don't. look like that, Sue. I wasn't rude—on my honour, I wasn't.' She paused, considering. 'Well, maybe I was a little rude. But only to the Body Beautiful, who doesn't count.'

  Sue looked appalled. She took a long draught of her wine and then said in a suffocated voice, `The adored only nephew of our most important client doesn't count?'

  Jessica shrugged. 'He takes no interest in Prince Giorgio's business. He just lounges around, topping up his suntan and flexing his biceps at passing females.' This was unfair and she knew it. `I doubt if he even knows which project I'm working on for Prince Giorgio. And cares less.' This was not.

  `He might care about having you thrown off the project, though,' Sue said crisply and, as Jessica looked bewildered, explained with patience, 'I mean, if you antagonise him. People are odd like that—touchy, even vengeful, if you get them on a sore spot. If you've been attacking his ego—and frankly, Jessica, that sounds exactly what you've been up to—he may want to get his own back on you quite badly.'

  Jessica looked shocked. 'Oh, I don't think so. He's not spiteful or anything like that. He wouldn't be petty.' 'You know him so well?' asked Sue politely.

  'Me? No, of course not. He's not my sort of person.' Jessica looked flustered for a moment. 'But I'm still

  positive he wouldn't do anything mean. Not like that.' She hesitated. 'He's not the type.' And then, as Sue still looked disbelieving, she added, 'He couldn't be bothered. I'm not that important to him.'

  In some agitation she seized the other glass from the tray and gulped some of the dark liquid it contained. Sue watched her thoughtfully. She decided to change the subject.

  `Have you taken to drinking Coke to keep a clear head?' she asked, indicating the drink.

  `No, of course not.' Jessica was affronted. 'This is Enrico's special iced coffee. He makes it for me when I want to work late and leaves it in a Thermos on my desk.'

  Sue was impressed. 'Every consideration! Is Prince Giorgio so anxious for the plans?'

  Jessica considered, frowning. 'No, I don't think so. It's just his standard of courtesy, I think. Guests on the boat have whatever they want: champagne, midnight coffee, whatever.' She chuckled. 'They're even allowed to drive the speedboat, I'm told, though it sends the mechanic in charge of it into a frenzy!'

  `Have you tried?' asked Sue, surprised. She knew that Jessica had a phobia, which she never spoke about and normally tried to suppress, about speed.

  Jessica shuddered. 'Good God, no! Leandro challenged me to try, though, and I saw the look of horror on the poor old mechanic's face.'

  `How did you get out of it?'

  Jessica shrugged. 'Told him I didn't have the time, and that I didn't like being driven in a speedboat either. That,' she added reflectively, 'was one of the things that annoyed him about me, I think.'

  Sue closed her eyes. 'No doubt,' she said carefully, 'he would have liked the opportunity to demonstrate his skill.'

  `Put me in my place by showing off, you mean?' translated Jessica. 'Maybe you're right. Well, no harm done,' she added.

  'I hope he thought so,' Sue said drily. 'Presumably time will tell. At least the standard of service hasn't gone down yet.' She wriggled pleasurably on the deep sofa. 'Are we really treated as guests?'

  'Really, really.' Jessica nodded her head vigorously. 'It's a bit of a nuisance in some ways—they're always summoning you to come and meet some new visitor. But they mean to be kind.'

  'And Prince Giorgio is here?'

  'On board, you mean? No, most of the time not. He'll take her cruising at Christmas, but during the summer she's just moored here marking time.'

  `So where is the Prince?'

  Jessica shrugged. 'Rome, Florence, Paris; Milan sometimes. . . I don't keep track. His secretary can always find him. Now she is on board. I'm not quite sure why. Enrico said something about her recuperating after an illness, but she looks bursting with rude health to me.'

  She heard the equivocal note in Jessica's voice. 'You don't like her?'

  Jessica hesitated. 'She's very efficient. And she always does what I ask.'

  `But?'

  'But—I'm not sure.' She was thoughtful. 'She's very correct. And beautiful, too, I suppose, in a gymnastic sort of way. She's just not very friendly—I suppose that's what I mean. And all the others—the crew, the occasional guest, even the Body Beautiful—are so relaxed and friendly! Maybe the poor woman just suffers by comparison. Anyway, see what you think when you meet her.'

  'I will,' promised Sue, intrigued. 'And is that it? The crew, the secretary, the Body Beautiful and us?'

  Tor the moment.'

  `That doesn't sound too bad,' Sue remarked, holding out her glass for Jessica to replenish it. 'At least you won't be trying to work with a full-scale yacht party going on around you.'

  `Except if Leandro has one of his weekends,' Jessica said gloomily. 'I gather they're legendary.' She sipped her coffee. 'Enrico says there's nothing planned at the moment, but Leandro might change his mind. He's th
e type to give a major party at a moment's notice on a whim,' she said bitterly. 'If only to annoy me.'

  Sue laughed, shaking her head. 'Your paranoia is showing! I'm sure he wouldn't. The crew wouldn't stand for it.'

  `The crew,' said Jessica with bite, 'think he's wonderful. If he told each and every one of them to walk the plank, they'd probably do it.'

  `They wouldn't like to have a big party sprung on them, though,' said Sue with feeling. She had experienced just such an eventuality several times since she had joined Shelburne and Lamont.

  `They would love it,' Jessica contradicted her flatly. `They'd think it was the most terrific game. It's part of why they're so crazy about Leandro: they never know what he's going to do next. They keep telling me,' she sounded despairing, 'how spontaneous he is. Spontaneous! What they mean is, he's hare-brained and completely unpredictable.'

  Intrigued by this surprising outburst, Sue chose her words carefully. 'He certainly seems to have stirred you up.'

  `Well, it's very unsettling,' said Jessica defensively. `And he's quite capable of having an orgy here on the spur of the moment. That's one of the reasons I'm working flat out.'

  `To make your escape before the orgy?' murmured Sue, teasing.

  `Exactly. Leandro would think it very funny,' Jessica said obscurely.

  `How far have you got?' asked Sue, when it was obvious Jessica was not going to confide further.

  `First phase complete,' was the complacent answer. `That's why you're here. I need it typed up and bound and circulated to Prince Giorgio and his people, to say nothing of the officials. I don't know what planning consent difficulties we may have; Prince Giorgio is too casual about it for my liking. I don't think it's going to be as simple as he wants to believe, but his local experts bear him out so far, so maybe I'm making a fuss about nothing. Anyway, after that we're into layout and unit design. I've got some sketches.'

  Sue nodded. To her experienced ears it sounded as if the project was moving fast.

  `Snags?' she asked.

  Jessica was thoughtful. 'None at all so far. It's been almost too easy. Something in my bones tells me it won't last.'

  `You foresee difficulties?' Sue frowned. 'Where exactly?'

  It was a big project, but most of the partnership's fee depended on it being successfully built. If it was not completed, though they would of course be paid for Sue's and Jessica's time, there would be no percentage fee, Sue knew.

  `Not foresee,' said Jessica tranquilly. She tapped her nose. 'Smell. Call it a hunch. Don't look so appalled, Sue. Sorting out difficulties is my forte.' She grinned. 'It makes my otherwise boring life exciting!'

  CHAPTER TWO

  WHEN Sue left, Jessica looked at her tidy desk with a sigh. She had never, she acknowledged to herself, felt less like working in her life. Nor was it entirely due to the unwelcome ordering of her papers; she had been aware of a restlessness for days. All the time she had been working, she had been aware of a profound dissatisfaction, as if she were looking over her shoulder waiting for something more important to invite her attention.

  Jessica sighed again. There was no reason for it. Despite her hunch—and her unusual difficulty with concentration—the project was coming along well and ahead of schedule. Prince Giorgio, whose original idea the project had been, was enthusiastic. She was living in delightful surroundings, her every wish complied with. On a broader canvas, she had no financial or personal worries. Her mouth twisted wryly; it would be more accurate to say that she had dealt with her financial and personal worries and was not going to let such things recur. And she was rapidly scaling the peak of her profession. So what was wrong?

  Jessica sat back in the delicate chair, shifting her shoulders restlessly against the tapestry back. A frown crossed her brow, drawing the decided eyebrows together in a black line across her face. She caught sight of the fierce expression in a mirror on the other side of the cabin and was startled by it. Good heavens, she looked like a harridan!

  She stood up and went to the mirror. It was oval in a heavily embossed gilt frame; probably eighteenth-cen-

  tury, she thought ruefully, like so many of the yacht's furnishings. The face that stared back at her, though, was far removed from the delicate prettiness of eighteenth-century beauties.

  The brows were too marked, Jessica decided dispassionately. The chin was certainly too decisive. Her widely spaced green eyes, inherited from a mother more famed for her looks than her common sense, were striking, of course. It was a memorable face, she supposed, with its spare bone structure, inherited from a dozen dissolute but aristocratic Shelburnes. And she had her gentle mother's fall of chestnut hair, too, although Jessica usually kept it knotted tidily at the nape of her neck. Loose it made her look—and feel—altogether too youthful.

  She leaned forward, inspecting herself. Yes, every feature had had its forerunner in the family portraits which had been sold, every one, to Uncle Richard. Her mouth tightened at the thought. That mouth, though she would never have been brought to admit it, was the single clue in an otherwise impeccable front that she might not be as cool-headed and passionless as she liked to appear. Or as invulnerable.

  Jessica had made it a point of principle never to be vulnerable to anyone or anything. She had made sure that she never put herself in anyone's power. She conducted her personal life with the sole objective of never, under any circumstances, leaving herself open to hurt.

  Of course, there were reasons for that. Unconsciously she sighed. The reflected image took on a wistful expression which Jessica, turning away from it, did not notice. It made her look younger, in spite of the severe hairstyle, and uncharacteristically fragile.

  There were times when she even regretted her toughness, she acknowledged to herself. Sometimes she wondered whether she could have been different. If her father had not died when he did, leaving her mother in

  such straits with eight-year-old Jessica to bring up, would she have been different? If she had not learned, almost before she knew what money was, that men would cheat and betray to get it, would she have been different then? If she had not watched her mother through the painful cycle of trust, doubt, disbelief and in the end desperate hurt, would she, Jessica, have been a nicer person? It was the hurt that had been so bad, she realised, for both of them. Beside the betrayal of confidence, the financial loss was almost irrelevant. It was not poverty that had wiped the laughter out of her mother's eyes forever, though at times they had been nearly destitute. It was Richard Dempster's betrayal.

  She moved her shoulders uncomfortably, pushing the memory away from her. Her mother was all right now, installed in a pretty house in a village where she had found friends. Her financial worries had been wiped out by Jessica's success; she was now secure. The trouble, thought Jessica, was that there was nothing she could do to take away the residual sadness. Her mother had loved and trusted Richard Dempster, and nothing could make up to her for the disaster he had wrought.

  She shrugged, suddenly impatient with herself. None of these thoughts was new, nor could she do anything about them. Why was she brooding in her cabin, picking over her character and wondering whether her treasured independence was quite worth what it had cost? She was not restless and introspective at home; why here?

  She started to frown again blackly. She knew the answer to the question and was too honest not to admit it. She did not like doing so, however. It was utterly unreasonable that a butterfly like Leandro Volpi should have the ability to stir her up like this with his teasing. It was not even as if it mattered to him.

  Not, she reminded herself sternly, that it mattered to her, either. She did not care a snap of her fingers what

  Leandro Volpi thought of her. His comments were only upsetting because they made her look harder at herself and she did not altogether like what she saw. Leandro Volpi was just an incidental irritant.

  She began to work. It was in a desultory fashion, though, unusual for Jessica. The incidental irritant kept intruding on her concent
ration until she could have screamed with annoyance. Within an hour she was pushing her writing pad away from her and looking at her watch.

  It was still too early for cocktails, even on this hospitable boat. The foredeck would therefore still be free from revellers. If she slipped into her bikini and went to sunbathe now, she ought to be able to manage an hour or so basking on her own. The evening rays were too weak to attract Leandro, who stretched out in the full heat of midday. And the stewards would not start to set out tables and canape dishes in expectation of the inevitable guests until the sun finally began to sink into the sea.

  She found that she had, to some extent, miscalculated. It was certainly too early for the staff to be preparing. The foredeck, however, was not uninhabited as she had hoped and expected.

  `Hello, carissima,' said Leandro from his sun-lounger, not opening his eyes. 'Decided to join me at last?'

  Jessica hesitated at the top of the companionway. She was suddenly horribly conscious of her bare feet and the fragility of the cotton shirt she had thrown over her bikini. Summoning her courage, she walked forward. She was being foolish, she told herself; Leandro could not have looked less threatening.

  `Good afternoon,' she said composedly. 'I was hoping to get in a little evening sunbathing. If that wouldn't disturb you?'

  The beautiful mouth quirked.

  `Cara Jessica, you disturb me all the time,' he murmured, barely moving his lips.

  He did not turn his head to look at her, or otherwise move from his utterly relaxed posture. His very indolence, she thought, gave the lie to the provocative remark. As usual, his objective was presumably solely to make her uncomfortable. Well, he would not succeed.

  She surveyed the still, beautiful body with dislike before seating herself on another lounger, as far as possible from him.

  `I'm sorry about that,' she said crisply.