Reputation

by Denise Robins

Genres: Romance

Synopsis

Lucinda was happy and deeply in love, but 'old sins have long shadows', and on the very night of her engagement party the dark, dangerous shadow of her past confronted her. Her wonderful engagement party went sour very quickly--at the sight of her fiance's brother Max and the woman he escorted. Vivian had nearly ruined Lucinda's life once before, with her unreasonable jealousy and terrible accusations. Vivian wouldn't let the past rest, and Max only had his brother's "best Interests" at heart. Between the two of them, Lucinda's future was in doubtful hands.... One woman was determined to destroy her... One man believed in her - loved her.

Release date: May 29, 2014

Publisher: Hodder & Stoughton

Print pages: 192

Sample

LUCINDA was five minutes late for work that morning.

It was a wet, windy morning in August, not at all the right sort of weather for the summer. All the girls who worked at Ruchelle’s had scurried into the shop this morning wearing macintosh coats and hoods and carrying umbrellas which would scarcely stay up because of the wind. They all grumbled as they gathered in the little room that they used at the back of the big salon which faced Knightsbridge. Somebody switched on an electric fire. The girls dried wet, silken ankles. But when Lucinda Mace joined the group, she looked as though it was a bright spring day. She, too, was soaked but her face was radiant. There was a sparkle in her large eyes which none of the others had seen before.

“I say, Cindy,” said one of them as she pinned up three damp curls in front of the mirror, “where were you last night? Out with a millionaire? Or have you won a football pool?”

Lucinda laughed back. That, too, was something she didn’t do very often. She was usually such a quiet, reserved sort of girl. When the others chatted during tea-break or after hours about their conquests, their ambitions, their parties, Cindy kept quiet. It had always been an astonishment to them that she rarely seemed to go out on parties or have a boy friend. Of course everybody knew that she had had bad luck at home. Her father used to be quite well-off but had lost his money, and her mother’s health wasn’t very good. They knew and respected the fact that Cindy took her pay-packet home instead of spending it on herself, and nobody was jealous of her. She had no enemies. She was generous and friendly and they liked her despite her reticence. She was always doing a good turn to somebody. Even Madame Colette, who was the manageress and a bit of an old tartar, had a soft spot for Lucinda. Nobody could deny that Cindy worked hard and put through as many, if not more, sales than most of them.

“Something’s happened to you, Cindy. You might let us in on it,” said the first girl who had spoken.

Madame Colette’s voice rose sharply, from the salon.

“Mes enfants, come along! We will have customers in a moment. Stop chattering, please.”

But the girls crowded around Lucinda. Amongst other things this morning they had never seen her look so attractive. She had woken up. She glowed and it suited her. Everybody thought she was far too modest. She was so attractive. A little on the thin side, perhaps, but her figure was beautiful and she had that rich red-brown hair which reminded one of horse-chestnuts in the sun. Her heavily lashed eyes were as greeny-blue as the sea, and she had a slightly retroussé nose thickly dusted with golden freckles. Monsieur Ruchelle, the proprietor who came regularly over from Paris with ‘models’, always called her ‘The Honeypot’. He tried to flirt with her. But he didn’t get far. No man found it easy to get on intimate terms with Lucinda.

Now, quickly, she held out the left hand which she had been shyly holding behind her back. The girls saw the small ruby and diamond ring on the slender finger. A little squeal of delight went up.

“Cindy! You’re engaged!”

“Yes,” she breathed.

“Tell us … tell us about it.”

“Mes enfants!” interrupted the impatient voice of Madame, “a customer. Lucinda … Bettina … quickly, please.”

The news that they were agog to hear had to wait until lunch-time. Then she told them.

His name was Derek Chalmerson. She had met him at the house of her great friend Iris Turnbull, who lived at Putney where the Maces also had a house. Iris worked as a secretary in a firm of manufacturing chemists. Derek was a bio-chemist there.

“Any money?” asked Madame Colette, who was also listening to the news from her favourite vendeuse. Madame was a true Frenchwoman. She had a great regard for money.

Cindy sparkled at her.

“Not much money but he’s absolutely sweet. I adore him.”

They pressed her for further details. Laughingly, Cindy warded them off but admitted that it was not a sudden affair. She and Derek had known each other now for several months. She had been out with him but hadn’t said much to anybody. It was her nature to be cautious, she said, and she had wanted to be quite sure about Derek. Last night he had given her this ring. On Saturday week there was to be a party at the Savoy to celebrate the engagement, and her twenty-first birthday, at the same time.

She was kissed and congratulated. Appropriately, the sun came out as she left the shop. And it was a real August sun. It beat down warmly from a fast clearing sky.

Derek was there to meet her.

One or two girls watched from behind the glass door of the shop and looked with approval at the young man as he took her arm and walked away with her. Definitely a good-looker was the verdict; fair with blue eyes and the strong, clean look of a typical English boy. He could not be all that much older than Lucinda, they thought. He wore nicely cut grey flannels, and he certainly looked as though he was in love. Lucky Cindy! She had found her man. No girl alive but would envy another girl that good fortune.

As they walked down toward the Brompton Road, Lucinda looked up at her newly made fiancé. He was fingering the little ruby ring on her finger and regarding it, then said with pride:

“So you’re still wearing it.”

“Idiot,” she laughed. “I haven’t had it off all night. I was so thrilled. Mummy and Daddy are thrilled, too. They like you so much, Derek.”

“It’s decent of them,” he said. “I only wish I had more to offer you.”

“But you’re going a long way—everybody says how brilliant you are.”

“You flatter me, darling,” he said. “I can hardly believe you’ve said ‘yes’. I’m damned lucky.”

“No, I am,” she said seriously.

“No,” he disagreed, “you deserve something much more …”

For a single instant the glow vanished from Lucinda’s eyes. An echo of the past that she had been trying for a long time to wipe from her memory stirred, and troubled her again.

I don’t deserve Derek. I don’t deserve anything as good or fine, the thought leapt to her mind.

It was strange that lunch with Derek, in one of their favourite restaurants, was not as happy for Lucinda as it should have been. But Derek positively beamed. He spent money in a lordly way and insisted on opening a bottle of wine to share with her. He held her hand under the table. He kept telling her that she was the most beautiful thing on God’s earth and that she looked ‘heavenly’ in her rose-pink linen suit, and that he regretted that he had neither mother nor father to welcome her into the Chalmerson family. His only living relative was a brother and Max was miles away in Kenya where he had been working for the last few years.

“I shall send an air-letter to Max today,” Derek announced. “I’ll tell him all about you. And you must give me a photograph to send him, so that he can see how beautiful you are. But the one thing I’ll never be able to tell him is how terrifically good you are as well as lovely. There’s something quite angelic about you, my Lucinda.”

She remained silent. She felt a distinct sense of unease. A distaste for these repeated compliments because she felt them to be undeserved. She said, quite sharply:

“I’m not all that angelic. I’m … just ordinary. Please don’t idealise me.”

“Leave me to be the judge of that,” said Derek grandly, then added: “Tell me again that you love me. I can’t believe that you really do.”

Now she answered with all the warmth and tenderness in her nature.

“I do love you, Derek darling, and I’m going to be the happiest girl in the world when I marry you.”

“We get on so well together,” he said, with a deep, fond look at her.

She had been unhappy for so long that it seemed difficult for her to believe that she had found this great, absorbing love. Derek was so ‘special’.

Yet when they first met she had not been particularly impressed. In her teens she used to like a man to be smooth and posed and glamorous, rather of the film-star variety. Derek had no such appeal. His thick fair hair, in school-boy manner, refused to lie down. His eyes were brightly blue under thick fair brows. He was a little shy. His hobbies were stamp-collecting (he was a first-class philatelist); and he had a passion for veteran cars. He actually owned a wonderful old 1920 Bugatti. He spent a lot of his spare time polishing the brasses and ‘topping-up’ the engine. The car was known as Mr. Moses. Mr. Moses amused Lucinda and always brought the dimples to her cheeks. She enjoyed going out in the old car with Derek. They entered the London-to-Brighton rally together, which thrilled her even though they didn’t do well. Derek said she looked ravishing in her old motoring cap with a chiffon veil tied under her chin. It was then he had first fallen in love with her, he said.

She, herself, had suddenly opened up, like a flower that has been too long denied the sun, under the warmth of Derek’s whole-hearted admiration. He told her that she was the first girl he had even taken seriously. He was only three years older than herself. Years ago she might have found him too smug and unimaginative. But last night when she melted into his arms and felt his clean, boyish lips on hers, she also felt the moment to be quite sacramental. The beginning of something real and wonderful in her life. He offered all the security and integrity she seemed so far to have lacked.

“I can’t think why you love me,” she had said humbly, as they sat in Mr. Moses in a quiet, secluded road on Putney Heath. Derek pressed his warm cheek against hers.

“Because you aren’t like other girls, always careering around with boy friends. You look terrific, but you aren’t one of those sex-kittens, I can’t stand that type. But you—oh, gosh! I felt half afraid to ask you to kiss me, until tonight.”

“Don’t make an idol of me, please …”

“You are in a way my idol, and I want to adore you,” he added with touching fervour.

She was immensely touched, yet she was still afraid.

The past was over but pasts have an ugly way of creeping back into the present. Hadn’t somebody once said that ‘old sins have long shadows’? It wasn’t that she had sinned but everybody else thought she had. Derek would only have to meet somebody who knew about that affair and he would be bitterly disillusioned.

Now they sat in the restaurant smoking their cigarettes and drinking coffee. Derek made plans for their future. He expected to get a new and better job in the large factory which his firm were building near Horsham, in Sussex. They must get married soon and buy a cottage.

“Let’s have a short engagement,” he said. And he talked of an early wedding. They’d drive away from the church in Mr. Moses—he grinned happily. Lucinda’s spirits soared. She must draw a veil over the past and blot it right out from her memory, she decided.

“Oh, darling Mr. Moses!” she sighed, and was happy again.

She telephoned the news to her godmother, Lady Hordham, that night. Lady Hordham was a wealthy widow living in a block of flats in Lowndes Square. She had been at school with Lucinda’s mother.

“I thought that Derek a very nice boy when you brought him to see me the other day,” she said. “I’m sure your parents will be just as pleased as I am. From what they tell me, Derek is a very clever young man.”

“But I’m a little worried, Aunt Mary,” said Lucinda.

“What about, child?”

“He’s so full of ideals. Frightfully high-minded. Don’t you think I ought to tell him about … about …”

Lady Hordham interrupted sharply.

“Don’t be so absurd! Under no circumstances. That was your past. Derek is your future. You are not to say one word.”

“Very well,” said Lucinda meekly.

Derek was warmly received by Lucinda’s parents and friends. Not for two long years had she been so happy.

But she did hope Aunt Mary had given her the right advice. The more she saw of Derek the more convinced she became that he would be horrified if he ever learned about the thing that had happened when she was eighteen.

Toward the end of the following week, Derek had some exciting news to give her.

Max, his half-brother, to whom he was devoted, was flying home. He was going to be at the engagement party.

“It’s a terrific thrill for me,” Derek told her. “The one person whom I value in the world, next to you, is Max. He’s such a marvellous person. He’s six years older than I am. We had the same father. After my mother’s death he took care of me. He has always done everything. I went out to Nairobi twelve months ago for my holiday. He even paid my fare—so I could be with him. He isn’t married. I can’t think why not,” Derek added with a laugh. “He’s considered jolly attractive by the girls. But if he has one fault it is that he is a bit of a cynic. He’s so good-looking, girls fall over themselves about him and I think he distrusts them. He hasn’t been as lucky as I am, you see. There aren’t many lovely girls as worthwhile as my Lucinda.”

“I wish you wouldn’t keep saying these things,” she exclaimed sharply.

Derek stared at her.

“What’s wrong with you?” he asked in a puzzled voice.

She bit her lip and looked down at her ring.

“Nothing,” she said. “I’m just … silly.”

Ten days later she and her parents drove to the Savoy to attend the party Aunt Mary was giving for her. And on this occasion she felt no qualms—nothing but happiness and excitement.

Lady Hordham, her godmother, was a generous hostess and Cindy was pleased that her friend Iris was present with a delightful boy friend. Iris, who had stood by her so loyally through the dark days of two summers ago.

When Derek saw his fiancée he told her that he was ‘dazzled’.

She was certainly glamorous tonight in white pleated chiffon—a graceful, simply cut evening dress which made her look very appealing. Her red-brown hair was parted in the centre and brushed up in thick waves over her ears. She wore no jewellery except Derek’s ring and the ruby earrings her parents had given her for an engagement present.

“Has Max come?” she asked Derek. When she had telephoned him earlier in the day the half-brother had still not arrived. Derek had booked a room in a hotel near him. Derek, himself, shared a flat with another young bio-chemist from his factory and had no room for Max. Besides, as Derek had laughingly told Lucinda, Max was the rich one. He had a very good Government job in Kenya and had done well, and wanted a good hotel for his holiday.

“He’s a grand person. I’m longing for him to meet you,” Derek said. “You’ll be most impressed, I’m sure. And it’s just ‘made’ my night having him with us.”

Lucinda was equally anxious to see Max. She had heard so much about him. Derek hero-worshipped him, Max’s word, Max’s ideas, Max’s wishes, were law with Derek.

“I know Max! We needn’t worry,” Derek told Lucinda. “If he says he’s going to do a thing, he’ll do it. If he has to drop down on the Embankment in a helicopter he’ll arrive in one. You’ll see!”

The little party had scarcely sat down and ordered their aperitifs before Derek sprang up again, his blue eyes shining.

“He’s here. Look, Lucinda—that’s Max.”

Eagerly she followed his gaze. She had to admit that the tall young man striding across the room toward them was most extraordinarily good-looking.

Taller than Derek, Max Chalmerson stood at least six-foot-four—wide-shouldered, slim-hipped, with the lean, vital look of a man who has spent a lot of time out-of-doors. He made every other man in this room look pallid. He gave the impression of great physical strength. He gave her only a cursory glance then turned to his half-brother.

“Derek! So I’ve made it. Sorry to be late, old boy. My plane was delayed, and I had to change.”

“This is great!” exclaimed Derek. “Let me introduce you to my fiancée, Lucinda Mace. Lucinda … Max.”

Lucinda held out her hand. But the smile that Max Chalmerson had given his young brother—swift, warm, friendly—vanished as he turned to her. His eyes—they were light grey and had a curiously magnetic quality—held hers with a hard, critical sort of glance that confounded her. It was not at all the sort of look she had expected. There was nothing warm or welcoming in his voice as he said:

“How d’you do …”

He doesn’t like me, she thought, dismayed. I can’t understand it. Why doesn’t he?

Then Max said:

“Incidentally, this is a small world. I’d no sooner put foot into the Savoy before I ran into a friend. She was in Nairobi all this last year and a great friend of mine. She came back t. . .