"Smith, Wilbur - Courtney 04 - Golden Fox" - читать интересную книгу автора (Smith Wilbur)

"I can't run,' she said. 'Don't make me run." 'If you don't, you might end up as a mascot on the handlebars of a motor-cycle." She laughed, and then bit her lower lip to stop herself.

"Don't do that,' she protested. 'Don't make me laugh. I need a loo. My condition is critical." 'Ah, so that's where you were headed when Prince Charming fell in love with you." 'I warned you, don't do that.' With an effort she smothered her giggle, and he took pity on her.

"There is a public loo at the gate to the park. Can you make it that far?" 'I don't know." 'The alternative is the rhododendrons."

"No, thanks. No more public performances today." 'Let's go, then.' He took her arm.

They skirted the Serpentine, and Ramsey glanced back. 'Your boyfriend's ardour must have cooled,' he said. 'No sign of him. What a fickle fellow." 'Pity. I'd love to watch you do that trick of yours again. How much further is it?" 'Here it is.' They had reached the gate, and she dropped his arm and started for the small red-brick building that nestled discreetly in the shrubbery beside the path; but at the door she hesitated.

"My name is Isabella, Isabella Courtney, but my friends call me Bella," she said over her shoulder, and darted through the doorway.

"Yes,' he murmured softly, 'I know." Even while she was in the cubicle she could hear the music, barely muted by the distance and the brick walls, and then the clatter of a helicopter passing low over the roof, but it was unimportant. She was thinking about Ramsey.

At the washbasins she studied herself in the mirror. Her hair was a mess; she tidied it quickly. Ramsey's hair was thick and dark and wavy. He wore it long, but not too long. She wiped off her pale pink lipstick on a Kleenex and then repainted her mouth. Ramsey's mouth was full but masculine, soft but strong; she wondered how it would taste.

She dropped the lipstick back into her bag and leant close to the mirror to appraise her own eyes. They didn't need drops. The whites were so clear they had a bluish sheen, like those of a healthy baby. She knew her eyes were her best feature, that Courtney blue, something between cornflower and sapphire. Ramsey's eyes were green. They were the first thing that had struck her about him. That clear startling green, beautiful but - she searched for the adjective - beautiful but deadly. That was it exactly. She didn't need the demonstration that had felled the Hell's Angel. One look at those eyes and she had known he was a dangerous man. She felt the back of her neck prickle with a delicious thrill of fear and of anticipation. Perhaps this was the one, at last. Beside his image all the others seemed to pale and fade.

Perhaps this was the one she had searched for so long.

"Ramsey de Santiago y Machado.' She said it in a throaty purr, savouring the taste of it in her mouth, watching her own lips form the words. Then she straightened up and turned to the doorway. She prevented herself from hurrying. Slowly, languidly, on the tall stiletto heels that made her hips roll as she walked and her bottom swing like a metronome, lace flashing under the abbreviated skirt, she went to the door.

She pouted slightly and let her long thick eyelashes droop over the blue as she stepped out into the slanting golden sunlight and she stopped dead.

He was gone. She caught her breath and felt the cold quick slide of her stomach as though she had swallowed a stone. She looked around her in disbelief 'Ramsey,' she said uncertainly, and ran into the pathway. There were hundreds of others coming down the tarmac path towards her, the first escapees from the concert trying to avoid the human avalanche that would soon follow, but none of them was the elegant figure she sought.

"Ramsey,' she said, and hurried to the park gates. The traffic boomed down the Bayswater Road, and she looked frantically right and left. She was overcome with a sense of disbelief. He had gone and left her. It was beyond her experience. She had shown him that she wanted him - she couldn't possibly have made it plainer - and he had walked away.

Her next emotion was outrage. Nobody did that to Isabella Courtney, not ever. She felt slighted and insulted and very angry.

"Damn him,' she said. 'Damn the man." Her anger lasted only seconds, and then it slumped. She felt lost and bereft. It was an alien sensation for her.

"He can't just leave like that,' she said aloud, and recognized in her own voice the self-pitying whine of a spoilt child, so she said it again differently, trying to recapture her anger, but it was unconvincing.

Behind her, she heard a shout of raucous laughter and she glanced back. A bunch of Hell's Angels was swaggering down the pathway, still a hundred yards away but coming directly towards her. She couldn't remain here.

The concert was over, the crowds were breaking up. The helicopter she had heard must have come in to pick up Jagger and his Rolling Stones. There was little chance of her rejoining her friends now; they would be lost in the multitude. She looked around her just once more, swiftly but despairingly.

Still no sign of that dark wavy head of hair. She tossed her own head and lifted her chin.

"Who needs him anyway, damned dago? she muttered furiously, and struck out down the pavement.

Behind her there was a chorus of whistles and catcalls, and someone, one of the Angels, began calling the step for her. 'Left, right, left - shake, rattle and roll." She knew that, her high heels were making her bottom waggle furiously. She hopped on one foot and then the other as she pulled off her shoes and then fled barefoot down the pavement. She had left her car at the embassy car park in the Strand, so she had to take the Tube from Lancaster Gate station to reach it.

Her car was a brand-new Mini-Cooper, the very latest 1969 model. Daddy had given it to her for her birthday, and had had it customized for her by the same body shop that had done Antony Armstrong-Jones's Mini. They had souped up its engine, upholstered it in white Connolly leather like a Rolls and resprayed it the same glitter silver as Daddy's new Aston Martin with her initials in gold leaf on the door. All the swinging set were driving Minis; there were more of them than Rollses or Bentleys parked outside Annabel's on a Saturday night.

Bella threw her shoes into the tiny back seat and revved the engine until the needle went into the red; the tyres squealed and left black smears on the ramp of the car park.

As she glanced back at them in the rear-view mirror it gave her a dark satanic pleasure.