Chapter 28

Safely back home after a day of humiliation and adventure, the beautiful Veronica had expected to be obliged to spend a few hours lying on the carpet outside her apartment. In the morning, when the street door automatically unlocked, a member of Andrew Vane-Clatworthy's staff would come up and return her shoulder bag, containing her keys, cheque book and other personal items. Imagine, therefore, her astonishment at beholding her keys still in the lock of her apartment door!

"Well! That's a bit of luck! I must have forgotten them in the excitement this morning and left them in the lock, and they've been there all day! Very careless, but what a wonderful time to have a memory lapse!

It was assuredly very unlike Veronica to make ANY mistakes, no matter how trivial. She was famous at work for her reliability and attention to detail. But we all slip up sometimes!

She let herself in to her apartment and went straight to the shower, standing under its blessed heat for many long minutes, feeling her chilled body become restored and warmed. Then she dried herself off and looked at her tall and athletic young body in her full length bathroom mirror. Not too many ill effects, she decided. A few bruises and scratches here and there, maybe ; but the overall effect of her hours of total exposure was to leave her looking very healthy indeed! Glowing was the operative word! The parts of her usually well covered body that had been bare from the very first hours of her adventure were somewhat red from the sun and the more intimate regions that had waited until late afternoon to be revealed to the world were scarcely even pink!

For some reason, she regretted that parts of her were still an almost pure and virginal white. She had a sudden and uncharacteristic urge to procure for her pneumatic body an all -over tan at the very first opportunity. Her mind became instantly resolved!

She would send off for some brochures in the morning! Once she had details of sundry exotic and sybaritic holidays in far away and very sunny places, she would book herself a few weeks of Paradise! At the same time, she wondered what Douglass would think about this. He had better go along with it, she thought - goodbye Douglass if he did not!

She looked out of the window and saw that it was still dark. It would not be for long, though, she thought, before the eastern sky became paler with the approach of another rosy dawn. Time for her to grab her weary mind and body a few hours' desperately needed sleep. She still had a job to go to and without the million from the old man, she would need to do her level best to keep it.

The idea of being kept, for the remainder of her days, by her beloved did appeal to her more than she would ever have thought before yesterday, but she had no idea when their marriage would take place. It might all have been one of those sudden infatuations that vanish away in the cold light of day. Not that it had faded for her, though! She still trembled as she thought of that embrace under the streetlight in Kentish Town!

She got into her bed and breathed a great sigh of pure satisfaction as she slid her still naked body between the smooth and faultlessly laundered sheets. The softness and warmth of her lovely luxurious bed immediately started their work on her. In seconds she was fast asleep. She dreamt of many things, all the events of the past day jumbled up into the most fantastic series of adventures, most of which involved a tall handsome Scotsman and a variety of grotesques and eccentrics. And she was nude throughout! Miss Prosser had just erupted into the dream and started trying to drag Veronica away from the embrace of Douglass, when she woke up.