Free The Defector by Evelyn Anthony

you can bring anyone down here you like, you know that.” Davina put a hand on her mother’s arm.
    “I know,” she said.
    “Don’t worry about me, I’m perfectly happy. I’ve got a very full life.”
    “It’s not still Richard, is it?” The faded blue eyes were anxious.
    “No,” Davina shook her head.
    “I got over that a long time ago.”
    “Are you still angry with Charley? I feel there’s an atmosphere between you.
    I wish you could forget it and be your old happy selves again. Blood’s thicker than water, and you are sisters.”
    “We’re all right, Mother,” she said.
    “He was no damned good or he wouldn’t have run off with her in the first place. I never gave it a thought.”
    “I’m so glad,” her mother said.
    “I do wish she’d meet someone and settle down for good. I thought Brian would be the answer but all he thinks about is his career, apparently. He’s made Charley really miserable.”
    “That’s a shame,” Davina said. Her sister was talking to Sasanov; he and her father laughed at something she said. She had never heard him laugh aloud before. She felt a little colour burning on both cheeks.
    “He likes you. He keeps looking at you.” Charley’s words floated into her mind. Mocking, patronizing-she didn’t know which. He wasn’t looking at anyone but her sister, and besides his laughter, there was an air of excitement about him. A full-blooded man responding to the challenge of a desirable woman. The room seemed suffocatingly hot. Surely they didn’t need a fire at this time of year. She had offered him a woman; why should she mind so much that he had found one for himself. Jealousy, she chided herself angrily. You’re jealous because it’s your sister. And you offered him a professional whore sent by the Department. Because you didn’t have the courage to go to him yourself. Remember how angry he was, how you nearly unbalanced the whole carefully constructed pas-de-deux you’ve shadow-danced with him for the past five months. He didn’t want clinical sex. He wanted you and you backed off. Now you’ve lost him to Charley. Like Richard, who left you to marry her;
    like all the men who ever met her. She got up and went over to the group by the fireplace. She slipped her arm through Sasanov’s, and saw the look of surprise on her father’s face. She smiled at him and at her sister.
    “I’m going to take Pavel for a walk in the moonlight,” she announced.
    “It’s got so stuffy in here.” Charley and her father were so unprepared that for a moment they just stared at her. Davina had never been intimate with any man in public. She had never claimed Richard, even when they were engaged, the way she was now claiming the Pole. Davina did not take men for walks in the moonlight.
    “How romantic,” her sister said.
    “Don’t stay out too long,” her father said. He looked embarrassed.
    “It’s getting late and I want to lock up the house.” She steered Sasanov out of the room; at the door to the terrace she dropped his arm.
    “I hope you didn’t mind,” she said.
    “I thought you might need a break from them. Father and Charley together can be quite overpowering.”
    “I like your father,” he said.
    “We talked politics after you left the dining-room. He is an amazing reactionary; I was most interested.”
    “He’s the only grass-roots Tory you’ll ever meet,” Davina said.
    “There aren’t that many of them left. And I’m afraid Charley is rather a flirt.” She couldn’t stop herself saying it. They were standing in the passage; she hadn’t opened the terrace door. Sasanov reached and turned the handle.
    “You said we would walk,” he reminded her.
    “That was just an excuse,” she protested.
    “You don’t have to go outside.”
    “I would like to,” he said.
    “Fresh air helps me to sleep.” There was a full moon and the garden was silver and black in the translucent light. He walked beside her along the brick paths round the