Betrayal

by Denise Robins

Genres: Romance

Synopsis

Nicola is very young and completely bewitched by the well-known novelist, Laurence Gray. He lifts her out of the suburbs into his spoiled luxury world. He leads and she follows, despite the protests of her family. But Nicola has to grow up very fast with Laurence's wife and daughter in the foreground, and worse still, the slow awareness that Laurence is a man of short-lived passions. A sweeping tale from the 100-million-copy bestselling Queen of Romance, originally published in 1936 and now available for the first time in eBook.

Release date: December 18, 2014

Publisher: Hodder & Stoughton

Print pages: 203

Sample

When her elderly “lady-help” called her at half-past seven with early morning tea, Mrs. Horten woke up, slipped a woolly jacket round her shoulders, and surveyed her little world.

“Edward,” she said, yawning, “your tea, my dear.”

Mr. Horten answered with a snort and a grunt.

“Orright, m’dear … put it down.”

Monica Horten sipped her tea and, over the rim of her cup, watched Miss Fitch draw back the curtains. Then she came to the bedside and said sourly:

“Will you have breakfast in bed this morning?”

Monica Horten would dearly have liked to say “yes”. She was very tired. She had had a late night because Edward had sat up talking about his business, and she hadn’t been able to get to sleep as early as she had hoped to do. But she wouldn’t stay in bed. It didn’t do to pamper oneself when one was supposed to set an example to the others. Whereupon a sudden thought struck Mrs. Horten.

“Is Nicola up yet?”

“No, Mrs. Horten.”

Mrs. Horten looked anxiously at Miss Fitch.

“I suppose she was very late last night, was she?”

Miss Fitch looked down her nose.

“I heard the front door round about two this morning.”

“Thank you Miss Fitch,” said Mrs. Horten meekly. She hated her “help” but dared not offend and lose her.

Miss Fitch departed. Monica put down her cup, lay back on her pillow, and stared dolefully out of the bay window at grey skies. It was raining. It had been raining all night. It was a depressing morning, chilly for March. Neither the woolly jacket nor cup of tea brought any real warmth to Monica’s thin, tired body, and to-day, even more than usual, there was a lack of warmth in her mind and heart. Everything was going wrong. Nothing had ever been very right in her estimation since the day she had married Edward Horten. But that was twenty-three years ago and so much had been crammed into her life, what with the war and its aftermath and giving birth to the three children, that it was difficult for her to believe she had ever been a young, happy girl.

Here was Nicola, the eldest, only twenty-one the other day, behaving atrociously in spite of a first-class education and all the sacrifices her parents had made for her. Really it was depressing. Two o’clock this morning! That meant she had defied her mother just as she had said she would and gone out again with that married man! Could anything be worse than Nicola falling in love with a man twice her age and with a school-daughter of his own!

Tears of self-pity filled Monica Horten’s weak blue eyes and she turned them reproachfully upon the bulk of blankets which was her helpmate.

“Edward, do wake up. I want to talk to you.”

Mr. Horten rose like a mountain, crashed over on his other side, and faced her. And now instead of the grey head she could see his healthy, reddish face with the clipped grey moustache and bushy brows, under which his small blue eyes gleamed metallically. Whenever she looked upon Edward these days, she wondered how it was possible that she had once built a romance around him or considered him as a lover. He was so completely a husband. A good man, oh, yes. … Hard-working, conscientious, and hide-bound by the habits and conventions of the city men who follow similar careers.

“Here’s your tea,” she said in her soft, melancholy voice and handed him the cup.

Mr. Horten drank it at a gulp, smacked his lips, and flung himself back on the pillow.

“Ahhh!”

“Don’t be so hearty, Edward,” she said.

“Wassa matter, m’dear? Headache?”

“Yes,” said Mrs. Horten, as a matter of course. “But it’s something more too.”

“Get it off your chest, old girl.”

She winced. She disliked being called “old girl”. It was too suggestive of that heartiness in Edward which she always considered a trifle vulgar. But of course Edward was not quite of the same good family as herself. Behind Monica was an Admiral of the Fleet, a General in the Army, and a Dean in Somerset, all of whom were the most refined weapons with which she would occasionally dig Edward to the depths of his heart.

“It’s Nicola,” she said.

“What’s wrong with Nicola?” he asked.

“You’re so blind, Edward. You never see things when they happen right under your nose.”

“Well, we’ll take it for granted that everything’s wrong with me, m’dear,” he said good-humouredly. “But I’m asking what’s wrong with the child?”

“The child, as you call her, is having an affair with a Married Man.”

Mr. Horten examined his finger-nails.

“M’m—been seeing a lot of that fellow Gray?”

“She has, and in spite of the fact that I’ve forbidden her to meet him.”

“It’s a pity, but these days you can’t forbid a girl to do anything. Besides, Nick’s of age and she can choose for herself.”

Mrs. Horten stared at her husband.

“But, Edward, you must be out of your mind. Laurence Gray has a wife, and a young daughter at school younger than our Margery. It’s the most disgraceful thing that he should be hanging round Nicola. He may not be serious, but she is. She’s desperately in love with him. People will soon begin to talk if they’re not already talking. It’s awful!”

Mrs. Horten seized a handkerchief from beneath her pillow.

Edward Horten was not particularly pleased that his eldest and favourite daughter should have fallen in love with a married man. Neither had he been as blind to the fact as his wife supposed. Actually he felt a bit guilty because Nicola had confided in him weeks ago and told him about her passion for Laurence Gray. Father and daughter had always been good friends and Nicola had come to him because, as she said, “Mummy wouldn’t understand.”

He advised her to be careful and begged her to do her best to stop seeing the man and get over it. For her sake he wanted her to throw up the fellow. But Nicola was so intense, so much more impulsive and perhaps so much more human than the rest of them. It wouldn’t be easy for her to get rid of this obsession which she had about Gray. He was a very attractive chap, a well-known novelist with a lot of glamour around him. A very great pity, in Edward Horten’s opinion, because the child was bound to get the worst of it, and if he hadn’t promised her not to do it, he’d have gone long ago to see Gray and tell him to cry off.

“Well, doesn’t it mean anything to you that Nicola’s involved with this dreadful man?”

“Who said he was a dreadful man?”

Mrs. Horten stared.

“But he must be! To play with a girl of twenty-one—and he’s nearly forty—and a father, himself—”

“Yes, yes, yes, the fellow’s behaving damn badly, but I suppose he’s fallen for the child and it isn’t the first time this sort of thing’s happened, my dear Monica. It’ll pass—sort of burn itself out in time—I don’t for a moment suppose that it’ll end in her running away or anything of that kind.”

“How do you know?”

“I don’t know. But why look on the worst side of things? Nicola’s infatuated with the fellow. He interests her. I dare say he’s the first sort of chap of his kind that she’s met.”

“You’re mentally deranged, Edward. You must be to talk like this. You’ll be telling me next that you’ll help Nicola meet the man behind my back.”

Monica lay back on her pillow, mute, floundering in her not very intelligent mind for an explanation of her husband’s extraordinary views on life. She didn’t—she couldn’t understand.

Nicola was a modern girl, of course. So was Margy, aged fourteen, and still at St. Fiona’s in Eastbourne. Nicola had been at St. Fiona’s, too. A most select school. Surely her education there had not helped to produce these lax ideas? A fresh worry assailed Mrs. Horten. Perhaps St. Fiona’s was not as good a school as it used to be, and Margy had better come away before she was infected with these ultra-modern ideas. But when she did come home she would see what Nicola was doing. It was awful—to have her elder sister setting such an example! And Peter, secretly Mrs. Horten’s beloved and most cherished child—fifteen and a half and doing so well at Orlbury—anything that Nicola did would react on him too. This affair MUST be stopped and—Monica Horten told herself—she would stop it if nobody else did.

Nicola was the only one who favoured Edward’s side at all markedly, being as dark as her brother and sister were fair. And so different was she in temperament to Monica Horten herself, that there were times when the mother wondered how she had ever managed to produce such a child. She had always been the naughty one with a wild streak in her which Mrs. Horten found difficult to subdue, and put down to heredity from her Italian grandmother. Nicola had been what Mrs. Horten called an irrational child with a passionate and impulsive temperament which she was thankful little Margery did not possess.

It was that friend with whom she stayed in town who put these ideas into her head, and had originally introduced her to Laurence Gray. A girl from St. Fiona’s too! Never would Mrs. Horten forgive Phyllis Laymann. It was all very well for Phyllis who moved in literary and artistic circles. She was used to it. Used to the late nights, the cocktails, and those queer people who, Mrs. Horten maintained, made art and literature an excuse for breaking the Commandments. But Nicola was not used to it and obviously it had gone to her head. Life in the suburbs wasn’t good enough for her now. She spoke of Sunburton as though it was composed entirely of Council houses. She said everybody round about was dull and that she wanted either to live right in London or the heart of the country.

As for their house, Nicola said that “Holmwood” was ugly because it was a good solid stucco residence which had been built in the reign of the late King, and it was cold because it had not got central heating. But the garden was beautiful, and Edward had only recently had a hard court made so that the children might enjoy more tennis. They had a nice Morris and at week-ends often drove down to Brighton, or to Eastbourne to see Margy. Every summer they spent three weeks in Cornwall. In fact nothing within reason was denied the Hortens, so what had Nicola to grumble at, and why should she be so ungrateful after all that they had done for her?

Nicola Horten, wearing only a nylon slip, stood in front of her opened wardrobe, examined the only three dresses which she possessed and tried to make up her mind which one she hated the least.

There was the brown two-piece which Mummy had bought at a sale and which she loathed. There was that rather pretty pink with the fur trimming which Nicola had chosen, but which was out-of-date now, and there was the grey tweed suit which was really the nicest of all. Laurence liked suits, and she could wear the green cashmere pullover which she had bought from Phyllis and which she knew had been frightfully expensive. Laurence was sure to like that.

She decided upon the tweed, took it out of the cupboard, shut the door, and eyed herself askance in the mirror. Laurence had told her last night that she had the most perfect little figure he had ever seen and she wondered if it was true. He said such marvellous things. Still, the mirror told her that she wasn’t too bad. Small, slim, white-skinned, with that delicate pink complexion which she had inherited from her mother. But there was nothing of her mother in the wide greenish-hazel eyes with the absurdly long lashes. What was it Laurence had said about them? That when she shut her eyes it looked as though two little black silk fans spread themselves upon her cheeks. Her short thick hair was dark rich brown and curled most obligingly in the nape of her neck without any necessity for permanent waving. She hated her nose, which was inclined to be retroussé, although Laurence assured her that it was one of her most attractive features. And her mouth—well, she had always known that was a good shape and had character, not being too small. He had quoted Wilde on that subject:

“As a pomegranate split in twain,

White-seeded, is her crimson mouth …”

Amazing the way Laurence could quote poetry to suit the moment. He had a miraculous memory. He was a miraculous man. He wrote books that made one’s heart beat fast just to read them. He was a “best seller”. Nowadays Nicola took special pains to go into all the lending libraries just to see his books on the shelf, and hunted all the papers for advertisements, because it was a thrill whenever the name LAURENCE GRAY stared at her in print.

She had read one of his books before she met him. Quiet Interlude. It had enthralled her, although she had known that it wasn’t the sort of book Mummy would take out of the library. It was too intimate. Love and life as it was and not as Mummy knew it. But Laurence knew. He knew everything.

When she had met him at the Laymanns’ cocktail party just before Christmas, she had felt from the very first moment he took her hand and said: “Why, hullo!” that Something was bound to happen. Something that would make a tremendous difference, which would be tremendously different from anything that had happened to her up to the moment.

Last night they had sat together in front of the fire on Laurence’s big divan, piled high with cushions, and he had read her a piece of a short story which he was writing about her, and then they had discussed the situation very thoroughly. With his arm about her and his lips drifting from her hair across one cheek down to her mouth, she had entered a heaven which she had never dreamed could exist—outside one of Laurence’s own books!

He told her he was very much in love with her, and had thought of nothing else for weeks—ever since their first meeting. During Christmas, which he had spent in Switzerland with his wife and daughter, he had been unable to get her out of his mind, he said. When he came back he had telephoned her. Since then they had seen each other over a period of eight or nine weeks, and he had realised that she was the one and only person in the world for him.

The word “divorce” had come up several times in the course of their conversation last night. He had amazed and enchanted her by suggesting that he might ask Isabel to set him free so that he could marry her, Nicola. It had left her breathless. She had never been conceited or strongly aware of her own personal charm. It seemed incredible that a man with Laurence’s brain should want to marry her. What had she to offer him save her youth and her beauty? Isabel Gray was, according to Laurence, not only beautiful but clever. Nicola couldn’t really understand why Laurence wasn’t still in love with his wife. But last night he had said:

“Try to understand that I don’t want an intellectual, critical person like Isabel. She has too many brains. More than I’ve got, as a matter of fact. A fellow gets sick of a clever, censorious woman. What he wants is peace and sweetness, and you give me both.”

Nicola, savouring the memory of those words, put the last dab of powder on her tip-tilted nose, made certain that she could not do anything further to enhance her appearance, and then walked out of the room.

Her late night had left no traces upon her face. She looked as she felt, fresh, exalted by the memory of all that Laurence had said to her and by the conviction that he was as much in love with her as she was with him, if that was possible! She felt dynamic this morning—quite ready for battle. The inevitable battle with her mother. Usually, if Nicola breakfasted in bed, Mrs. Horten looked in to say good morning. She would make sure that Nicola hadn’t a headache and that everything was all right. But this morning she had not been near her. She was a woman who took motherhood seriously and never failed in the little details.

Of course this business of Laurence was difficult. Nicola was not insensitive to that fact that such an affair must necessarily bring pain to her mother. To the rest of the family as well, perhaps. They were so hopelessly impregnated with the narrow views and conventions of their forefathers. It would be almost impossible to get past the restrictions in her mother’s outlook, Nicola thought, whereas had she possessed another kind of mother—Phyllis’s, for instance, go-ahead and modern—it would have been so simple. Why, Nicola asked herself with irritation, must she have been born into this hopelessly out-of-date family for which new ideas and free thinking and psycho-analysis simply did not exist?

Hands in the pockets of her short tweed coat, Nicola sauntered into the drawing-room. Although so familiar to her, the room with all its appointments annoyed her this morning. It was typical of Mummy. Stereotyped and, to Nicola’s young eye, hideous. No doubt when Mrs. Horten was a young married woman it was the “last word”. And you could not uproot what was planted in her mind. She had conventional ideas on decoration and scorned modern décor.

She found her mother attending to her cherished plants

“’Morning, Mum!” she said, with an attempt at being jocular.

Monica Horten, looking more than ever subdued in a grey knitted suit, turned to her daughter and gave her a sharp critical look through the horn-rimmed glasses. She said:

“Nicola, you’ve got far too much lipstick on. Why do you want to look as though there was a horrid gash across your face?”

Nicola took a compact from the bag which she was carrying and examined her face.

“It isn’t so bad. It’ll soon come off, anyhow.”

“I want to talk to you,” said Mrs. Horten.

Nicola sighed heavily and was led by her mother like a lamb to the slaughter, towards the sofa. They sat down, one in each corner, eyeing each other warily. Mrs. Horten came straight to the point.

“You were out with That Man last night.”

“If you mean Mr. Gray—I was.”

“I forbade you to see him again, Nicola.”

The pink in Nicola’s cheeks deepened.

“Darling, really, I’m twenty-one, you know—”

“So you may be,” broke in her mother. “But you appear to have less sense than you had when you were Margy’s age.”

Nicola said:

“I don’t remember you telling me I had much sense then!”

Mrs. Horten threw out her hands.

“Nicola, why are you doing this? Why are you behaving in this foolish, wicked fashion? It isn’t that I mind you havin. . .