Lady With A Past Read online

  CHAPTER TWO

  JOSEY followed her reluctantly. Maud’s voice had a no-nonsense sound to it.

  ‘Thorne! You’re going to have to put that brief down long enough to meet Josey!’

  Brief? Josey confusedly absorbed the surprising picture of a room dedicated to work. The usually clean desk in the corner was littered with papers and folders and Josey’s typewriter by the window had been taken over by a severe looking woman of uncertain age. The chair behind the desk was empty and it wasn’t until Thorne answered from behind them that Josey realised he was in the room and had apparently been pacing the floor while dictating.

  ‘Can’t it wait, Maud?’ His voice was deep and crisp with impatience. ‘I want to get this off in today’s mail.’

  Josey started, then realised with horror that she knew that voice. She knew this man. His face, his voice were branded forever on her brain. She had dreamed about him in her worst nightmares, and once, she had hated him with a hot, bitter hatred that she had learned to control only after years of self-discipline.

  She turned slowly, her mind screaming in protest; expecting to be publicly denounced as a criminal; expecting, at the very least, to receive a puzzled look of half-recognition.

  He wasn’t even looking at her.

  Oh, it was him, all right. Not Thorne Lorrimer, as she had once thought, but Thorne Jordan Macallan. Maud’s nephew, apparently. It was the sort of mad, unbelievable coincidence that one swore could never happen. But it had happened. The dissolute playboy had turned into a hard-working lawyer with an outstanding reputation among his fellow members of the bar. He was changed, of course. The thick black hair was sprinkled with a distinguished silver; the lines on his face were scored a little more deeply and the cynicism was certainly more pronounced. He was harder—the thin mouth more contained. He looked up impatiently, his eyes passing over Josey with an unflattering lack of interest. ‘Can’t it wait, Maud?’ he repeated.

  ‘Yes, it can, but I thought you might like to meet Josey. After all, you two have heard me speak of the other for years, but you’ve never met.

  Josey,’ she went on, ‘this mannerless young man is my nephew, Thorne Macallan. And this is Miss Pettigru, his secretary. Josey Smith.’

  Josey swallowed convulsively but did not speak. She couldn’t. Thorne Macallan, however muttered a bored, ‘How d’you do,’ then added, ‘Maud, I’ve booked a room for Miss Pettigru at the Hilton. Can Theodore carry her over when she finishes typing this brief? Say—in about an hour?’

  ‘Of course, darling.’

  They left then, Josey following Maud in a state of merciful numbness.

  Did he really not recognise her? Could it have been a trick? The possibility that it wasn’t a coincidence turned her ice cold with shock, but a moment’s calm reflection reassured her. No, she had simply made a colossal, unbelievable mistake. She had blundered into a friendship with the aunt of her worst enemy. She felt like laughing with relief and crying with the bitter irony of it all.

  ‘What’s wrong? You look pale, darling,’ Maud said anxiously.

  Josey looked at her dazedly. ‘Maud, how did I get such a wrong impression of your nephew?’

  ‘Wrong impression?’

  ‘That he was—well—different. Even his name …! And I thought he’d never worked a day in his life.’

  Maud turned pink. ‘Well, as to that, I—er— may have given you that impression,’ she1 said uneasily.

  ‘Why?’

  .

  ‘To keep you separated. Josey, Thorne has been opposed to you from the beginning. He has taken the attitude that you were an opportunist and would eventually turn on me, if I allowed it. Why else, he said, would a young girl make a friend of a much older woman? I knew he” would soon learn differently if he knew you, but—well ; I didn’t want him to know you.

  You were very vulnerable in those days. Thorne is very attractive to women and—you could have been shattered by a bad love affair. Thorne is unscrupulous, and you would have been fair game to him. Not that he is—unfeeling—but I was afraid for you,’ she finished simply.

  Josey listened in frowning silence. Maud had overestimated her nephew’s appeal, but of course, she wasn’t to know that. Most women would find him devastating. It was just that she was immune. ‘Do you think I’m less vulnerable now? Or is he less cynical?’

  ‘No, to the latter question. But you are stronger. He can’t hurt you now. You can hold your own—I am sure of it.’

  ‘Thank you for the vote of confidence,’ she said drily.

  She left Maud then, and went to her room. In her pretty pale green bathroom, she pressed a wet cloth to her face and tried desperately to quell her uneasy stomach, If Maud only knew, she thought helplessly.

  Would Maud want her as a secretary—

  as a friend, even—if she knew Josey was a parolled convict, that even her name was false?

  .Yes, Maud would—but her nephew was something else, altogether.

  Why hadn’t she listened closely when Maud prattled on about her Thorne? From time to time, she had noticed Macallan’s picture in the paper, or his name, in connection with a case, but she had refused to read about him. A capsule biography might have mentioned his connection with Maud, and this could have been avoided. Why, even John must have known him! But her life as John’s secretary had been so quiet, so—“cloistered, she had not met many people.

  Of course, she couldn’t stay on now. She was scared to death he would find out who she was: he could destroy her. Not only was she an ex-felon, but she had violated her parole, and could be returned to prison to serve out the remainder of her sentence—another eighteen months. And from what she knew of Macallan, it would give him great pleasure to see to it personally.

  Once she had made threats, swore to be revenged. It all seemed so futile now, those dark, bitter thoughts she had nursed in prison. But a clever lawyer like Macallan could use those threats to put her in her place—or what he considered her place.

  Looking back, she realised she should never have pleaded guilty when she was innocent, but her lawyer had been very persuasive. And she had been scared and alone, with no family or friends to advise her. When he told her it would be cut and dried; much easier than chancing her fate with a jury trial, and the Judge would be sure to give her a suspended sentence, she had believed him. But neither of them had reckoned with Macallan.

  Looking back still further, she saw all the wrong turns she had made, the wrong decisions— beginning with the first one: her decision to leave Medlar’s Mill, Alabama, after the death of her parents. But she was talented—she could sing, and she was beautiful. All her friends assured her that Jocelyn Stewart’s name was destined to be famous. So she took the little money she had and headed for Atlanta.

  She soon found that dreams are not reality and money melts quickly in a big city. Her living expenses were high and in addition, there were voice lessons—her voice did not project well over the noisy babble of a nightclub. She had to buy clothes for her act, and a complete range of makeup. One of the club managers insisted that she become a blonde, So, what with one thing and another, her money was soon gone.

  It was about then that she met Tony Leyden, a young man with a seemingly endless supply of cash, and an equal desire to spend it all on her. He set seige to her virtue with gifts, flowers, expensive evenings and little loans from time to time, to ‘tide her over’. Josey managed to hang on to her virtue but she was weak when it came to the loans. Sometimes, they paid her rent that week and sometimes Tony gave her the only meal she had that day.

  She recognised later that her handling of Tony was stupid, that inevitably, he was going to demand payment for all those favours.

  ‘You damn little tease!’ he growled. ‘Do you know how much that dinner set me back tonight? What did you think I expected from all those meals and that rent money I advanced you?

  A run-around?’ That was the last night, when Tony became ugly and threatening.

  ‘r />
  ‘I never asked you to!’ she cried, sickened by her own naivete. She .was humiliated, too, because there was a certain amount of justification in his words. ‘I think we’d better stop seeing each other. I’ll pay you back as soon as I can, but let’s call it quits.’

  He had apologised then, and finally succeeded in wringing a promise of another date for the next night. That day, he caught her at her apartment door as she was leaving for work.

  ‘I’d like you to keep this box of mementoes for me,’ he explained casually, holding out a shoe box wrapped and tied. ‘My landlady snoops and I don’t want her prying through my things.’

  ‘Very well.’ She had taken it coolly, seeing it as another in a long list of efforts he’d made to involve her in his life. Under the circumstances, however, she could hardly refuse. i ‘Put it on your closet shelf,’ he added, with a ; quick, nervous smile. ‘I’d feel safer if it’s up on the top shelf, out of the way.’

  That night, when the police came, they had known exactly where to look when they searched her place. She hadn’t taken it in, at first, looking dazedly at the money—thousands of dollars which they said Tony had stolen from his employer. Because the box was in her possession, she was taken into custody and arraigned as his accomplice, her protests ignored. It wasn’t until later that she learned Tony had implicated her in it all, from the beginning.

  Her attorney was sent to her by the Public Defender’s office. He was young, inexperienced, and from the start, hadn’t believed her.

  ‘Did you know Leyden has hired Macallan for his defence?’ he remarked after their interview was completed and he was ready to go.

  ‘What is Macallan?’ she asked dully.

  ‘Not what—who. T. J. Macallan is just about the most brilliant defence lawyer around.’ His voice was filled with a grudging admiration. ‘Not his usual sort of case—this—but I understand it’s a personal thing. Your boyfriend has got himself some clout, Miss Stewart.’

  She flinched.‘Not my boyfriend.’

  He shrugged, ‘He can’t help but do our side good, so don’t knock it. I understand Macallan is pressing for an early hearing. Whatever concessions he gets for his client will automatically be extended to you.’

  When she saw Macallan, Jocelyn felt hope—for the first time. This man would accomplish something. Thank God, he was on her side!

  She watched him greedily, seeing his mannerisms, the cool smile, the scornful eyes as they watched her lawyer present her case. Once, he glanced at her, the grey eyes passing over her indifferently with a contemptuous lack of interest. She flushed with mortification. She knew she looked terrible—the anxious -weeks had taken their toll. Her dress was cheap and unattractive, and her bleach was growing out—the dark roots were showing.

  She had looked at Tony once, noticing his confident manner. He had avoided her eyes from the beginning. She shrugged tiredly. He was nothing to her now: a piece of dirt, a bit of trash. He wasn’t even worth her hatred.

  She had no idea that Tony was shocked by her appearance. Gone was the glow, the sparkle, that made him infatuated with her. Her eyes were dull, empty; her slender body skin and bones. He felt righteously that she had betrayed him by becoming so defeated. Why, his lawyer was going to think he was blind to have fallen for her. The shock of Macallan’s betrayal—or what Jocelyn considered his betrayal—was so great that she passed her first weeks in prison in a state of dull apathy.

  When that passed, she kept herself going by dreaming of revenge.

  She became a model prisoner by deliberately blanking out all memories—even the happy ones—and living like a vegetable. She made herself eat to stay alive, but she paid no attention to her appearance, beyond cutting her bleached hair as it grew out. She learned to type so she could get a job, and she quietly hated Macallan. At night, her mind rebelled at its rigid daytime discipline and she had nightmares, mostly about bringing Macallan to his knees.

  Eventually, she was parolled. Her first interview with a lecherous parole officer gave her a good idea of what her future would be if she didn’t co-operate by allowing him sexual favours. She fled from him in horror, back on to the city streets, sure of one thing: she was going to have to change her name and make her own way, if she was going to survive.

  The other alternative was suicide.

  It was in that mood that she stumbled into the city library and met a funny little creature dressed in a World War I aviator cap and a long, flapping car coat, circa 1905. Her mop of silver curls, her bright eyes and twitching nose reminded Josey irresistibly of a small clever toy poodle, wandering among the stacks of books.

  That didn’t last. Within a short time, she was sitting opposite Maud Lorrimer in a nearby coffee shop, unburdening her difficulties in finding a job. She had introduced herself as Josey Smith and learned, in turn, that Maud wrote novels under the name of Frances Flower. Josel had even read some of them.

  She had soothed her conscience about the name by reminding herself that Smith was her mother’s name and everyone in Medlar’s Mill had called her Josey since the day she was born. And making a clean break with a new name was symbolic, somehow. Jocelyn Stewart had been a fool, a stupid, naive little idiot who had believed everything she had been told and went to prison for it. Josey Smith was going to be strong and independent, and a lot more cynical about men.

  ‘I have a friend,’ Maud said suddenly. ‘A dear old fuddy-duddy who has just retired from teaching in a college and wants to write a book. A history book about early Georgia or something equally dull. He needs an assistant who can do research and type. Think you can do it?’

  ‘Doesn’t that sort of thing require a college degree?’ asked Josey cautiously.

  Maud waved airily. ‘So what? Lie a little. The job carries room and board she added persuasively.

  Later, Maud admitted that she had been persuaded to befriend Josey by reading in her horoscope that morning, that she would form a meaningful new friendship that day. It was precisely the kind of impulsive, generous thing Maud would do.

  Josey saw John through four long, dull history books. He was nearly through the fifth when he died.

  Until then, Josey hadn’t looked back. Until now..;

  CHAPTER THREE

  JOSEY looked at herself’ in the mirror. She was still pale, but her eyes had lost that blank look and no one, looking at her, would guess she had just sustained a severe shock.

  She was feeling better, too. Perspective is a fine thing, she thought wryly, and examining the problem from the vantage point of six years ahd given her that. Why get so upset? She remembered Macallan because their meeting had! been so traumatic for her, but obviously, he hadn’t the slightest recollection of it. And if she kept a low profile, he wasn’t likely to. In fact, she had over-reacted, all things considered.

  Of course, she no longer thirsted for revenge. She could even laugh, a little, at that violent, shocked young girl. Oh, it still hurt, naturally, but six years of John’s civilised approach to life had made her see things in a different light. That perspective again!

  She remembered now the last time she had been reminded of Jordan Macallan. She had seen his picture in the paper, photographed at a charity ball with Eve Sanders, one of its organisers. Josey had paused to read, struck by the sheer good looks of the photographed couple. ‘T.

  Jordan Macallan and Eve Sanders, caught last night as they entered the Hilton for the annual…’. She had stopped right there.

  She wondered if Eve Sanders was the latest in long line of Macallan’s women. She courted publicity—of the right sort, of course—was the daughter of a State Supreme Court judge, and the ex-wife—No 3 or 4?—of Dolph Sanders, the millionaire sportsman. She was beautiful, but Josey, studying her face, thought she looked arrogant. Obviously, an ideal choice for Thorne Macallan!

  Which brought her to Maud, and her absurdity in thinking she could ever be attracted to a man like that. Maudie could rest easy, Josey thought amusedly, leaning forward to apply lipstick. />
  Her first panicky thoughts about leaving had begun to recede.

  Thorne wouldn’t be staying more than a few days—she could wait it out. At ‘ the very least, she could wait and see how it went, More composed now, she could greet Annie calmly when she knocked on the door a few minutes later. The cook had gone home ill, and she needed help. She knew Josey could cook— would she be willing to help out?

  Josey would, gladly. It gave her an excuse to hide in the kitchen until she further got her bearings.

  She made a quiche, which was one of her impromptu standby meals, but Annie wouldn’t hear of her remaining in the kitchen to whip up a salad or dessert. She was as capable as anyone of putting ice cream into a parfait glass and pouring creme de menthe over it, she scolded.

  Besides, Miss Maud expected Josey for lunch.

  ‘No, she doesn’t.’ Theodore, wearing a white coat, came into the kitchen.

  ‘Mr Thorne has just told her that as long as he’s working on that brief, he’ll have his lunch in the library. Miss Maud has taken to her bed. She says she’s not hungry.’

  Annie’s eyes met his. ‘Disappointed, is she?’

  Yup. He’s a hard man, and he doesn’t like being pushed. She ought to know that.’ Which meant exactly nothing to Josey.

  Josey’s first meeting with Thorne occurred in the late afternoon. She was making flower arrangements in a little room off the kitchen when he suddenly appeared in the doorway. He had changed out of his business suit into a pair of running shoes and well worn jeans that moulded his powerful thighs. He was wearing a baggy sweatshirt, probably one he had in college for there was a scarlet number across the chest. And he looked, in a subtle way, tougher and more dangerous.

  ‘I believe you and I are due for a talk, Miss Smith.’ He smiled wolfishly She frowned cautiously. ‘A-are we?’

  ‘Get a raincoat or something, and we’ll take a walk.’

  ‘Now?’

  ‘No better time. It won’t wait.’

  Josey took down an old raincoat that was hanging on a peg, and probably belonged to Annie. There was a scarf in the pocket, which she tied around her head. Her hands were trembling and she thrust them into the pockets as she followed him out the back door and across the lawn. He was headed for the beach by way of a boardwalk that had been put down between Maud’s house and the one next door.