London, 1923

Stage actress Daisy Edwards goes looking for escape at a wild party. Instead she finds reckless passion with a total stranger. Like Daisy, Dominic Harrington is reeling from the Great War, desperate to feel again. But the erotic force of their encounter leaves Daisy unsure whether to run or succumb….

Even if he hadn’t met her in a police cell, Dominic would have no doubt that Daisy is trouble. For the first time in years, he feels intrigued, aroused and vibrantly alive. Both insist there will be no promises, only the rapture of the moment. Pleasure is its own reward—but when it’s this addictive, how can they ever walk away?

The Undoing of Daisy Edwards

Marguerite Kaye

www.millsandboon.co.uk

Table of Contents

Cover

Back Cover Copy

Title Page

Chapter One

Chapter Two

Chapter Three

Chapter Four

Chapter Five

Chapter Six

Chapter Seven

About the Author

Extract

Copyright Page

Chapter One

London, October, 1923

Dominic

The telephone rang at two in the morning. Constable Durning was as apologetic as ever. He probably thought he was getting me out of my bed, but it was one of those nights when I knew better than to try to sleep. Three times in a fortnight. The man was certainly earning his retainer. But even though it took me less than half an hour to get to the police station, by the time I arrived, Grace had left.

‘I’m sorry, Mr Harrington, but there was nothing we could do to hold her. Miss Harrington wasn’t actually arrested this time,’ Constable Durning told me, looking distinctly uncomfortable.

‘Then why did you call me?’ I hadn’t been sleeping, I hadn’t even been trying to work, but that didn’t mean I was happy to be dragged out on one of those dank foggy London nights on a fool’s errand.

‘Miss Harrington insisted,’ Durning said.

He looked absurdly young tonight, far too young for his uniform. He reminded me of Jeremy, except that Jeremy would have been nearer thirty than twenty by now, and the constable, with his baby-smooth face, would have been far too young to go to war and get himself killed. Born too late, some of the post-war generation said about themselves, as if it was a bad thing. As if they had missed out on something. They had no idea.

The constable selected a key from the board, beckoning me to follow him. ‘I thought my sister had left,’ I said, my feet automatically taking the familiar route to the cells regardless.

He unlocked the door. ‘She did, sir, but she said that you would take care of this.’

‘This’ was a woman. Lying on the wooden-slatted bed, her cheek resting on her folded hands, her long, slim legs curled up, she was out cold. ‘What the hell did Grace expect me to…’

But the constable was already heading back to the desk, and it was obvious what Grace expected me to do, though why my dear little sister decided not to hang around to tell me…

I sighed, because the answer to that was obvious, too. Grace knew better than to give me options. The woman on the bare bed sighed deeply. She was dressed in something gold that shimmered in the dingy light, clinging to her form, more like molten metal than fabric. She was slim, they all seem to be slim these days, but there was nothing in the least boyish about her shape. I noticed that, and I surprised myself by noticing. Breasts. Hips. An enticing dip at her waist. There was a sleek curve to her calves that made me want to run my hands over them. Silk stockings. Gold shoes. Her clothes screamed haute couture. And money.

On closer inspection it was clear that she was older than Grace and the wild group of Bright Young Things my sister tore around London with. Her lips were painted scarlet. A bright slash of colour in her perfectly pale face, there was something lush about those lips, something almost succulent. Long, sooty dark eyelashes. A smooth cap of hair that looked shiny blue-black in the dim light. She was like a very beautiful effigy, save that no statue had ever had the effect she was having on me. No woman, either, not for a long time. Before…

But I made a point of not thinking about before, not now I was living the after. For so long I’d been sure there never would be an after. It was what I’d wanted more than anything back then. But now that I had it—be careful what you wish for, my mother used to say. One of the few things she ever said that was right. She’d be appalled if she knew how her daughter was behaving. Not that Grace would give a damn. Not that Grace seemed to give a damn about anything. One of the things we have in common.

The woman on the bench began to stir. She sat up. She moved like water. Her eyes were huge. They looked black, though they couldn’t be. She was what they call a stunner. And she was what I’d call stunned. Pupils dilated and totally vacant, eyes unblinking. ‘I don’t suppose you have any idea where you are?’ I asked.

No response.

‘Or what your name is?’

‘I need to go home,’ she said.

Her voice was husky, but her pronunciation was quite clear.

‘If you’ll tell me where that is, I’ll take you.’

A vacant look. I could have left her. She was nothing to me. Of course, Grace wasn’t nothing to me. Speaking honestly, though, it wasn’t for Grace that I put my arm around her. There was something—broken, fragile, lost?—in the woman’s face that I recognised. She staggered against me as I helped her along the corridor that smelt—mostly—of bleach, while she smelt of something much more exotic and infinitely feminine, which my contrary body liked a lot.

‘Do you have her bag, her effects?’ I asked Constable Durning. But he shook his head. No hat, no coat, and there were obviously no pockets in that slinky dress she wore. She began to slither down to the floor. ‘I don’t even know her name,’ I said, fumbling for a douceur.

The policeman pocketed my note expertly. ‘Very funny,’ he said.

Her legs gave way and I caught her, hefting her over my shoulder. I must have looked confused, because the constable stopped smirking. ‘You really don’t recognise her?’ he said, looking quite incredulous. ‘Surely you must? She’s one of the most famous women in London. On of those actress sisters, Daisy Edwards.’

Daisy

I thought at first I was dreaming, only my dreams usually brought me out in a cold sweat, had me falling and falling, or running, or landing with a crash, and this one—I lay there, eyes tight shut, trying to find the right word, but not trying too hard, because I didn’t want to wake up.

This dream made me feel safe.

As soon as the word popped into my head, I realised that if I was thinking about it I couldn’t be asleep, and I stopped feeling safe—if that’s really what I had been feeling—and my heart took up its usual just-awake hammering and my eyes flew open, and then my heart just about stopped as it became clear that safe was the last thing I was.

No matter how many martinis I had, I had never before failed to get myself home. This definitely wasn’t home, and I’d had—I counted—two, three martinis at most, which, to someone who had grown as accustomed to them as I had in the last few years, was practically nothing.

I tried not to move, though all my instincts were to run, but he seemed to be asleep, the man I was in bed with—and I really, really didn’t want to wake him up. He was lying on his back, his face turned away from me, towards the wall. He had on a shirt and trousers. And I…

The jet beads that looked so fantastic on the black lace insets of my gold Lanvin dress were digging into my back, but I was still wearing the thing. And everything else. I wiggled my toes. Everything, save for my shoes.

So he hadn’t even tried. I felt curiously insulted, which was strange, because that was the last thing I wanted. Though as I leaned over just the tiniest fraction to take a look at him, I was taken aback to discover my body and my mind didn’t quite agree.

He wasn’t handsome, not in that classic, smooth way of Douglas Fairbanks or Rudolph Valentino. It was difficult to tell his age, but I reckoned he must be somewhere between thirty and thirty-five. Dark brown hair that looked as if it might wave if it weren’t so short. A swarthy complexion, and even in his sleep there were lines furrowing between those thick brows. A strong nose. A strong face. He looked like a hard man, or he would, were it not for that mouth with its full bottom lip and its intriguing little curl at the corners.

I eased back, the better to take a measure of his body, without really allowing myself to register that’s what I was doing. A sprinkling of hair at his throat, where his shirt was open. A strong body to match his face. Muscled. He was the kind of man you’d see in one of those films of Poppy’s striding across the screen to scoop the heroine up in his arms. You’d be safe there, I thought, with your head on one of those broad shoulders.

Safe. That word again. I didn’t like the idea that it was this man who’d crept into my dreams, so I dragged my eyes away from him to survey my surroundings instead. The room was very masculine, all pale walls and dark furniture. Stark and modern. Clean lines, uncluttered, functional and discreetly expensive. How the hell had I got here?

I was light-headed. My brain was all sharp edges. When I eased back the sheet and slowly, carefully, began to sit up, I had the most awful feeling. Like first-night nerves. That dreadful sense of anticipation and premonition, as if you’re about to step into an abyss. I remembered the party, a flash in my head like a photograph with sound, and the dread deepened. Surely I hadn’t been so stupid?

But I was pretty certain that I had. Biting my lip, I edged out of the bed. The man didn’t stir. My feet touched the soft, pale carpet, and I ran for the door.

* * *

I made it as far as the bathroom, since I didn’t have any shoes, or any money for a taxi-cab either, and I sat on the edge of a huge bath, shaking. In the theatre, people do all sorts of things to calm their nerves and enhance their performance. The white powder in those slim little boxes worn like jewellery these days, that was one way. I’d never tried it. It wasn’t just that I found the whole process of sniffing it off-putting; I wasn’t too sure about the result. Martinis softened the edges of the world and gave a slow slide into oblivion. It seemed to me that white powder had the opposite effect. Why take something that makes the world seem like a brighter place when it’s not?

But last night I’d been just desperate enough to try. It wasn’t work. I never need anything to help me with my work. Nerves are what makes an actress. But after. It was his birthday, you see. Mine, too. It was one of those odd coincidences that Anthony took as a sign when we first met. He was a great one for signs. I turned twenty-nine yesterday. My husband would have been thirty-one. I celebrated with a needle full of cocaine. And just my luck, of course, that rather than making my world sparkle, it made it black. One of my so-called friends helped me to inject it, and after that I don’t remember a thing.

I felt surprisingly well, physically. Anything could have happened. My stomach clenched into a knot then, not with fear, but the opposite, whatever that is. When the cold of that needle pricked my skin, that’s what I’d wanted. Anything. Anything to make me feel something, no matter how bad. And all I’d got was oblivion.

No, that wasn’t true. There was one of those stupid treasure hunts, and I was in a car. And then I was in the street refusing to get back into the car. And then—and then really nothing. I had no idea how I’d got here or who the man in the bed was. But I’d spent the night with him and he hadn’t touched me, and suddenly that wasn’t an insult but extremely reassuring.

I got up and stared at myself in the huge mirror over the wash-basin. Washed clean of powder and lipstick, I looked like a ghost, all white cheeks and big black pools for eyes. I wasn’t beautiful, Poppy is the beauty of the family, but there’s something about the way my face is put together that fits with the fashion. I ran my fingers through what was left of my hair. Anthony would have hated it, but I liked it. They cut it with a razor. I never had it shingled; I preferred it straight. Sharp edges.

People found me intimidating. Some men saw me as a challenge. It wasn’t deliberate, on my part. When Anthony was killed, I simply stopped thinking about that sort of thing. But staring at myself in the mirror, I realised that was a bit of a fib. In dreams, sometimes, recently, those thoughts had been there, and I’d wake up with that particular ache. Watching the faint flush of colour creep up the pale skin of my throat, I couldn’t deny that it was there now. And thinking about that man in the bed, I couldn’t deny it had been there when I’d woken up, too.

What was it about him? Was it that he hadn’t touched me? That he’d slept, fully clothed, beside me, quite indifferent to the charms that so many men would have found irresistible—if sales of those stupid picture postcards were to be believed. But I doubted it was more than the novelty value. Sisters. Poppy and Daisy. The contrast of my dark hair and her blond. That, and the fact that Poppy really was a beauty.

There was a tin of tooth powder on the shelf above the sink. I took some, using my finger as a brush. Today was the first day of my thirtieth year. I’d been a widow for nearly six, which was three times longer than I’d been a wife. Anthony was dead. So many of them were dead. And I might as well be. If I could only prove that I wasn’t.

Chapter Two

Dominic

The first surprise was that I’d slept—and with no dreams that I remembered. In fact I’d slept deeply enough for it to take me a moment to remember what had happened. And even then I’d only just realised she was gone, the famous actress, when the door to my bedroom was flung open and there she was, looking none the worse for wear.

Quite the contrary. She stood there, framed in the doorway like some sort of exotic goddess. She didn’t walk across the floor towards me; she seemed to glide. Maybe it was the dress. You could see the outline of her legs through that shimmery gold. They were long legs. And her eyes, in the morning sunshine that filtered through the windows, really did look black. ‘Quite an entrance, Miss Edwards,’ I said, because that’s exactly what it was.

‘Thank you,’ she said, ‘but I think, in the circumstances, you might call me Daisy.’ That husky voice again. It gave me goose bumps. I liked that she didn’t try to pretend she wasn’t acting.

‘Dominic.’ I should have got off the bed, but I wanted to see what she would do. Something told me there was going to be a show, and maybe it was because I’d slept, or maybe it was the primitive in me, because I’d rescued her. Probably, though, it was because she was a sinfully attractive woman and she was here, in my bedroom, that my body was very much aware of her presence. And even though my body hadn’t been the slightest bit interested in any woman for so long, I waited, and I wasn’t disappointed.

‘Dominic,’ she said, making quite a meal of it. A slow drawl—it made my name curl like smoke. Then she produced a smile that was the exact same thing: a slow curl. ‘I take it you rescued me,’ she said. ‘Funny, but I don’t remember you being at the party.’

‘That would be because I wasn’t. I picked you up from a cell.’

The mask slipped when I said that. For a second she looked pretty horrified. Then it was back. Her reputation as one of London’s finest actresses had obviously been earned. She arched one of those perfectly shaped eyebrows. ‘So I’m a jail-bird,’ she said, with a whimsical little smile. ‘Tell me, Dominic, do you hang about the police stations on a white charger?’

‘No, I don’t saddle up until I get a telephone call.’

She laughed at that, and I got a glimpse of the woman behind the mask again, but the sound of her laughter seemed to startle her, and it was gone before I could decide whether or not I liked what I saw. ‘How charming,’ she said, sliding down onto the bed, sitting so that the curve of her behind just brushed my thigh. ‘Do our boys in blue call you every time a female is brought in?’

‘Oh, no, I’m very particular. They know only to call me under very specific circumstances.’

Her face froze. ‘You’re a reporter. How very naive of me.’

I caught her wrist as she made to go. ‘I’m Grace Harrington’s brother.’

She frowned over that, and then she smiled. Not a stagy smile, a more gentle thing, and more fleeting. It made her look younger. Relieved. Oddly vulnerable. ‘Oh. I see. Yes, Grace does rather have a habit of getting into scrapes, from what I’ve heard. You don’t look very like her.’

‘She takes after our mother.’ Which she did, in looks, if not in temperament. That she got from our sainted and now not-so-dearly departed father.

‘Thank you,’ Daisy said. ‘For not leaving me there, I mean. I suspect you’ve saved me from the embarrassment of a very unflattering picture in the paper.’

‘No one knew you were there.’

‘Save the policeman who called you. And let’s face it, it’s not likely that you’re the only one greasing his palm. If Grace hadn’t had him call you—as I presume she did—then he would have been on the telephone to the gentlemen of the press.’

She said it with a kind of world-weariness. I supposed that dealing with such things is part of being a famous actress. And that under that soft, vulnerable face, there must be quite a tough little nut. The contrast was—I don’t know, it was intriguing. ‘You didn’t have a handbag with you,’ I said. ‘I had no option but to bring you here. There’s a telephone in the hall if you want to call someone. If there’s anyone at home worrying, I mean.’

It had only just occurred to me. She wasn’t wearing a ring, though she wasn’t wearing any other jewellery either, which was a bit odd. But she simply shrugged. ‘There’s no one,’ she said. ‘I live alone.’

‘Me, too.’

There was a silence then, as we stared at each other. I hadn’t meant it to sound the way it did—or maybe I had, because my hand, which was still clasping that slim wrist, was already pulling her down towards me. I hadn’t been planning on kissing her, I hadn’t planned anything, but as she leaned in to me, and I smelt the faint trace of her perfume and the mint of my own tooth powder, and those big, big eyes seemed to look way too deep inside me, I couldn’t not have kissed her.

There was a split-second, as her lips touched mine, when I thought, This is a mistake, and I almost drew back. And then I didn’t. Her lips were soft, her skin cold. Her hands were icy through my shirt-sleeves, I remember. She kissed as if she wasn’t used to kissing, and I probably did the same, because I wasn’t.

Then something shifted. I don’t know if it was just me. It felt like both of us. We—we found it. Our mouths matched. Her eyes closed. Or mine did. And she sank against me, all soft curves through that dress, her breasts pressed against my chest. And she kissed me. Dear God, how she kissed. I felt as if she had reached inside me and twisted my guts with that kiss. When she tore her mouth away, I was struggling to breathe.

‘I don’t do this,’ she said.

I thought she meant she was going to leave. ‘I don’t, either,’ I said. ‘Not since—not now.’

She nodded. ‘No,’ she said, with a sad little smile, ‘not now.’ She sat up, pushing her hair back from her eyes. ‘I took cocaine last night. I never have before, but I was…’ She shrugged. ‘Anyway, that’s what happened.’

‘Did you enjoy it?’

‘I have no idea. No. I wanted—I just wanted to feel something.’

‘And did you?’

She shook her head, giving me another of those tragic smiles. ‘Nothing works any more.’

‘No.’

She touched my face, running her fingers over my forehead, my cheeks, my mouth, as if she was trying to read something from it. ‘That did. For a moment, that did.’

I touched her the way she had touched me. Forehead. Cheek. Mouth. ‘It did. Maybe we should give it more of a chance.’

She stared at me with those big eyes. Then she shrugged, and leaned back in to me. ‘Why not?’ she said. ‘I’ve tried everything else.’

Daisy

I couldn’t believe what I’d just said, but it was the one thing I hadn’t tried. It wouldn’t be the same. This man was nothing like Anthony. But that was the point, wasn’t it? I didn’t want gentle. I didn’t want loving. I wanted raw. I shuddered as I looked at him. That particular twisting, wrenching kind of shudder that comes from low inside you. Raw was exactly what I wanted, and I was pretty sure raw was what I would get from Dominic Harrington.

Maybe it was shameless of me. Calculating, even. Maybe I was still under the influence of that stuff. I don’t know. I didn’t think about it. It was as if something inside me had been caged and I’d opened the door just a tiny bit, but already it was pacing, anticipating. I could have shut it back up again at that point. I’m pretty sure I could have. But I didn’t. I wanted this. I needed it. But at the same, I was scared I wouldn’t have the courage to go through with it. So I did what I’ve always done—I played it. I imagined myself as Poppy’s friend Theda Bara, and quite deliberately I let out my own version of the Vamp.

I wriggled free of Dominic and got to my feet. The fastenings on my Lanvin gown were at the side. I undid them and let the whole thing slither to the ground. He was watching me. He couldn’t take his eyes off me. Daisy would have been blushing by now, but it wasn’t Daisy standing here in her stockings and her cream silk underwear. I leaned back over the bed to unfasten his shirt, but he caught me, rolling me down beside him onto my back. And then he kissed me again, and it was what I wanted. Exactly what I wanted. Raw. Rough. Hot.

He slid his leg between mine. I could feel the weight of his chest pressing against me. He still had his shirt and trousers on. I tore at the shirt, kissing him back just as roughly as he was kissing me. His tongue slid into my mouth. I touched mine to his. It was a shock. A good one. Like being jolted into life. Our mouths opened. Our kisses were wild. It was like fighting. Not anything like before. Not anything like anything

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