The Undoing of Daisy Edwards (A Time for Scandal) Read Online Free PDF Page A

his eyes. The fact that it’s lurking. That he won’t let it out. That he’s not one of those men who have to talk. That he’s one of the ones who want to forget, but can’t, but he’s trying. Like I do. Only I would never, ever equate what I’ve been through with what he’s been through, you understand. Only how he handles it.
    ‘I have to change,’ I said, looking down at my skimpy St Joan outfit.
    He smiled, a smile that played havoc with my stomach. ‘You were good,’ he said.
    ‘You didn’t expect me to be?’
    He shrugged. ‘I knew you could act. I just didn’t expect this.’
    I was wiping the last of the paint from my face and rubbing in cold cream. It was the way he said it, determined not to let it matter, that made me realise he was just as much confused by what happened between us as I was. ‘I wasn’t acting yesterday,’ I said, though I hadn’t meant to. ‘Only at the start.’
    He didn’t pretend to misunderstand, but he wasn’t about to let me see that it mattered, and I liked that. ‘You were good,’ he said again, and the way he said it left me in no doubt of what he was talking about. I bit my lip to stop myself smiling.
    ‘So what did you expect,’ I asked, ‘that I’d be in a revue, one of those musicals?’
    He laughed at that. ‘I’m extraordinarily glad you weren’t.’
    It made him look so different, that laugh, the grin that followed. Younger, of course, but I could see he could have been charming, too, once. Still, if he put his mind to it. ‘I certainly wouldn’t go short of work if I sang,’ I said. ‘There’s barely an audience for anything but musicals in the West End these days.’
    ‘Why don’t you?’
    ‘I used to. Before…’
    There was one of those silences. I prayed that he wouldn’t fill it by asking, and he didn’t. Instead, he levered himself away from the door. Even as the leading lady, my dressing-room was pretty small. Dominic made it seem tiny.
    ‘I know,’ he said, and when I turned away because I thought I might cry, he put his hands on my shoulders, made me get up from the mirror and face him. ‘I know you lost your husband. I know you don’t want to talk about it, any more than I do, but I wanted you to know that I know.’
    I nodded. I swallowed hard. ‘Yesterday, you were the first since.’
    ‘Five years since the Armistice,’ he said, looking a bit desperate. ‘Afterwards, when you left, I kept thinking that should be enough time to forget.’
    ‘I doubt there will ever be enough time.’
    ‘I was thinking, maybe the trick is to stop trying,’ he said. ‘What I mean is yesterday, you weren’t the first, but you were the first to—yesterday, I—you—I forgot. With you, I mean. I was—I was…’
    ‘Free,’ I said, then shook my head. ‘No, not that. But there wasn’t anything else, for a while. Just—just us.’
    ‘Yes.’ He smiled that curiously curling smile that tied knots inside me. ‘If you’d looked back, I’d have asked you to stay.’
    ‘If you’d called me, I’d have looked back.’
    I was smiling, and it had happened without my even noticing. What I was noticing was the breadth of his shoulders under his dinner jacket. The fan of lines around his eyes that didn’t come from laughter. The grooves that ran between his nose and his mouth. And his mouth. Such a contrast, that mouth, so soft and sensual set in such a hard face. I was standing there, not quite in his arms, but close enough to touch him, in my tunic and tights, with my hair flattened on my head, and my face shiny with cold cream, and I didn’t even think about how awful I must look until afterwards, because the way he was looking at me, the heat in those eyes of his, it was as if I was naked. And that’s what I wanted to be. Naked.
    It was as though I’d said it aloud, because he put his arms around me then. And I moved right into them. And he kissed me. Hard. And I reached up and pulled his head down so he could kiss me even