A Lady Under Siege(64)

“That’s a good way to live,” she said. “Is it your motto too?”

“I try.”

“So I can say something?”

He nodded.

“To Thomas?”

Again he nodded.

“Okay.” She took a deep breath. “It’s always hard to start,” she said. “I’ll just plunge in then. Thomas—I can plainly see you’re falling for her, and I can understand why. You’re vulnerable, and lonely, and she’s offering you a shoulder to cry on. She’s become kind and sweet, all the things you sincerely wish she would be. On top of it she’s grown more and more flirtatious, she’s playing the total temptress. But don’t forget I’m in her head, and I can feel everything she’s up to. All this playacting as if she likes you, and teasing you, this dancing for you, presenting her body and subtly offering it to you, well, in a way it’s fake, and in a way she was right to worry—it’s affecting her, she’s starting to waver, she’s starting to like you and be attracted to you, which might be a good thing except at the same time it’s making her crazy with guilt because it’s a total betrayal of her duty to her poor dead husband.” Meghan was aware she was starting to sound frantic, but she couldn’t slow the torrent of words. “I’m totally blown away by the strength of her loyalty and duty and honour that’s all bound up in a promise to her husband to kill you, and now she doesn’t really want to do it anymore but she feels like she must, and it’s driving her out of her mind! The sooner she does it the better—that’s what she’s thinking now, she absolutely must do it quickly before she loses her nerve! So Thomas—she still intends to kill you, I know you don’t see it, you see only a pair of lovely eyes gazing at you so seductively these past days and nights. She’s trying to get you to lower your guard. She’s planning to plant a knife in your back. So be careful!”

Meghan caught her breath. She’d been addressing Thomas, but of course it was the friendly, slightly mocking face of Derek looking back at her. “Thank you for putting up with this,” she said.

“You should really come in and sit down,” he said. “I’ll get you a glass of water. You look dehydrated.”

“No, no, I’m fine,” she protested. She bent down to rummage in a satchel at her feet. “There’s one more thing I need to show you. To show Thomas.”

“Come in, come in then. Here I thought you were done, now there’s visuals to go along with the audio.”

She followed him into his living room, and from her satchel she pulled a colour photocopy of Artemisia Gentileschi’s painting of Judith and Holofernes, showing the gritty, indomitable heroine hacking away at her hapless victim’s neck. Blood flowed in rivulets down the white linen sheets. She handed the image to Derek. “Look at this. This is what she wants for you. For Thomas, I mean.”

“That’s nasty,” Derek said.

“Please be careful, Thomas,” Meghan continued imploringly. “I can tell you this much—she has a small knife now, one her maid brought from the kitchen. She intends to lure you to her bed, and give herself up to you, and then when you’re defenceless, and blind to everything but desire, she’ll stab you with the knife. The provocative dancing, the demure looks, all the seductive behaviour that’s put you under her spell, it’s an act. When she moons at you lovingly, it’s a falsehood. That’s the way you need to think of it.”

“Sounds to me like the web’s been spun, and she’s already caught him.”

“He is smitten,” Meghan agreed.

“Men are helpless in the face of a good-looking woman who knows her power. She looks like you, right?”

“Yes.”

“Then he’s a dead man.”

Meghan ignored the compliment. “I don’t want him to die. That’s why I’m warning him.”

“If I were him I’d go for it,” Derek said. “Getting a woman to do all the work for once is like manna from heaven—there’s not a man alive who would pass that up.”

“Don’t, Derek,” Meghan said curtly.

“Don’t what?”

“Don’t mess around with this.”

“I’m not, I’m not,” he insisted. “Listen, if he really is in my head, he might like to hear some advice, man to man, bro to bro.”