Chapter Thirty-six

Janet Saxon Scarlett, eyes still shut, reached under the sheets for the body of her lover. He was not there, so she opened her eyes and raised her head, and the room spun around. Her lids were heavy and her stomach hurt. She was still exhausted, still a bit drunk.

Matthew Canfield sat at the writing desk in his undershorts. His elbows were on the desk, his chin cupped in his hands. He was staring down at a paper in front of him.

Janet watched him, aware that he was oblivious to her. She rolled onto her side so that she could observe him.

He was not an ordinary man, she thought, but on the other hand neither was he particularly outstanding, except that she loved him. What, she wondered, did she find so attractive about him? He was not like the men from her world—even her recently expanded world. Most of the men she knew were quick, polished, overly groomed and only concerned with appearances. But Matthew Canfield could not fit in to this world. His quickness was an intuitive alertness not related to the graces. And in other respects there was a degree of awkwardness, what confidence he had was born of considered judgment, not simply born.

Others, too, were far more handsome, although he could be placed in the category of ‘good-looking’ in a rough hewn way… That was it, she mused; he gave the appearance both in actions and in looks of secure independence, but his private behavior was different. In private he was extraordinarily gentle, almost weak. She wondered if he was weak. She knew he was deeply upset and she suspected that Elizabeth had given him money to do her bidding. He didn’t really know how to be at ease with money. She’d learned that during their two weeks together in New York. He’d obviously been told to spend without worrying about sums in order to establish their relationship—he’d suggested as much—and they’d both laughed because what they were doing on government funds was, in essence, spelling out the truth. She would have been happy to pay the freight herself. She’d paid for others, and none were as dear to her as Matthew Canfield. No one would ever be so dear to her. He didn’t belong to her world. He preferred a simpler, less cosmopolitan one she thought. But Janet Saxon Scarlett knew she would adjust if it meant keeping him.

Perhaps, when it was all over, if it was ever to be all over, they would find a way. There had to be a way for this good, rough, gentle young man who was a better man than any she had ever known before. She loved him very much and she found herself concerned for him. That was remarkable for Janet Saxon Scarlett.

When she had returned the night before at seven o’clock, escorted by Derek’s man Ferguson, she found Canfield alone in Elizabeth’s sitting room. He’d seemed tense edgy, even angry, and she didn’t know why. He’d made feeble excuses for his temper and finally, without warning, he had ushered her out of the suite and out of the hotel.

They had eaten at a small restaurant in Soho. They both drank heavily, his fear infecting her. Yet he would not tell her what bothered him.

They’d returned to his room with a bottle of whiskey. Alone, in the quiet, they had made love. Janet knew he was a man holding on to some mythical rope, afraid to let go for fear of plunging downward.

As she watched him at the writing desk, she also instinctively knew the truth—the unwanted truth—which she had suspected since that terrible moment more than a day ago when he had said to her, ‘Janet I’m afraid we’ve had a visitor.’

That visitor had been her husband.

She raised herself on her elbow ‘Matthew?’

‘Oh Morning, friend.’

‘Matthew, are you afraid of him?’

Canfield’s stomach muscles grew taut.

She knew.

But, of course, she knew.

‘I don’t think I will be when I find him.’

‘That’s always the way, isn’t it. We’re afraid of someone or something we don’t know or can’t find.’ Janet’s eyes began to ache.

‘That’s what Elizabeth said.’

She sat up, pulling the blanket over her shoulders, and leaned back against the headrest. She felt cold, and the ache in her eyes intensified. ‘Did she tell you?’

‘Finally. She didn’t want to. I didn’t give her an alternative—She had to.’

Janet stared straight ahead, at nothing. ‘I knew it,’ she said quietly. ‘I’m frightened.’

‘Of course you are—But you don’t have to be. He can’t touch you.’

‘Why are you so sure? I don’t think you were so sure last night.’ She was not aware of it, but her hands began to shake.

‘No, I wasn’t… But only because he existed at all… The unholy specter alive and breathing—No matter how much we expected it, it was a shock. But the sun’s up now.’ He reached for his pencil and made a note on the paper.

Suddenly Janet Scarlett flung herself down across the bed. ‘Oh, God, God, God!’ Her head was buried in the pillow.

At first Canfield did not recognize the appeal in her voice, for she did not scream or shout out and his concentration was on his notes. Her muffled cry was one of agony, not desperation.

‘Jan,’ he began casually. ‘Janet!’ The field accountant threw down his pencil and rushed to the bed. ‘Janet!… Honey, please don’t. Don’t, please. Janet!’ He cradled her in his arms, doing his best to comfort her. And then slowly his attention was drawn to her eyes.

The tears were streaming down her face uncontrollably, yet she did not cry out but only gasped for breath. What disturbed him were her eyes.

Instead of blinking from the flow of tears, they remained wide open, as if she were in a trance. A trance of horror.

He spoke her name over and over again.

‘Janet. Janet. Janet. Janet…’

She did not respond. She seemed to sink deeper and deeper into the fear which controlled her. She began to moan, at first quietly, then louder and louder.

‘Janet! Stop it! Stop it! Darling, stop it!’

She did not hear him.

Instead she tried to push him away, to disengage herself from him. Her naked body writhed on the bed; her arms lashed out, striking him.

He tightened his grip, afraid for a moment that he might hurt her.

Suddenly she stopped. She threw her head back and spoke in a choked voice he had not heard before.

‘God damn you to hell!… God damn you to hellll!’

She drew out the word ‘hell’ until it became a scream.

Her legs spread slowly, reluctantly, apart on top of the sheet.

In that same choked, guttural voice she whispered, ‘You pig! Pig! Pig! Pig!’

Canfield watched her in dread. She was assuming a position of sexual intercourse, steeling herself against the terror which had enveloped her and which would progressively worsen.

‘Janet, for God’s sake, Jan… Don’t! Don’t! No one’s going to touch you! Please, darling!’

The girl laughed horridly, hysterically.

‘You’re the card, Ulster! You’re the God damn jack of… jack of…’ She quickly crossed her legs, one emphatically on top of the other, and brought her hands up to cover her breasts. ‘Leave me alone, Ulster! Please, dear God, Ulster! Leave me alone!… You’re going to leave me alone?’ She curled herself up like an infant and began to sob.

Canfield reached down to the foot of the bed and pulled the blanket over Janet.

He was afraid.

That she could suddenly, without warning, reduce herself to Scarlett’s unwilling whore was frightening.

But it was there, and he had to accept it.

She needed help. Perhaps far more help than he could provide. He gently stroked her hair and lay down beside her.

Her sobs evened off into deep breathing as she closed her eyes. He hoped she was sleeping but he could not be sure. At any rate, he would let her rest. It would give him the time to figure out a way to tell her everything she had to know.

The next four weeks would be terrible for her.

For the three of them.

But now there was an element which had been absent before, and Canfield was grateful for it. He knew he shouldn’t have been, for it was against every professional instinct he had.

It was hate. His own personal hate.

Ulster Stewart Scarlett was no longer the quarry in an international hunt. He was now the man Matthew Canfield intended to kill.