by Daphne Clair
She dozed in the shade, but when the sun began to fade and a cool breeze sprang up, she moved into the last of the sun where the sand still held some warmth, and made herself a little hollow to curl into. If it was morning before she was found, she was going to get pretty cold.
Trying to forget the possibility, she wrapped her arms about herself and watched the gentle lapping of the sea, the tiny bubbles it left as it smoothed the sand in its wake. The effect was hypnotic, and she closed her eyes, the rustle of the leaves overhead and the occasional birdsong, the soft shushing of the waves combining to lull her into sleep.
She was dreaming, dreaming about the sea, and she seemed to be floating on it, just floating, but it carried her further and further from the shore where Shard stood calling her, shouting her name in increasing despair. She wanted to go back to him, but she was too tired to move, to swim, and she knew that if she tried she would never make it. She watched Shard calling her and she felt a soft, aching sadness for them both ...
'Elise ‑'
She opened her eyes and moved her head a little, and saw him at the top of the cliff, in his face a terrible agony of fear, and then he was plunging down to her so fast that she sat up, calling 'Shard, be careful! I'm all right— it's only a twisted ankle.'
He didn't slow down, he slithered the last few yards, hardly grabbing at handholds, and when he leaped on to the sand and strode towards her she saw that his hands were scratched and bleeding and he had torn his shirt.
'It's only my ankle,' she repeated, and he dropped beside her and touched it with shaking hands, then ran them trembling over the rest of her as though he couldn't believe that she was safe and whole. 'Are you sure,' he demanded hoarsely. 'You're sure that's all?'
'It isn't even broken,' she said. 'Only I couldn't climb bade up. And there's nothing else—I'm fine otherwise.'
His hands touched her shoulders, and for a moment he closed his eyes. He cupped her head in his hands and looked down at her face, and as though the words were wrenched from him, said, 'Oh, God, I've never been so frightened in my life ‑'
This was Shard the impregnable, the self-sufficient— Shard who needed no one and asked for nothing. Elise looked at him on his knees beside her and felt a savage joy. Her eyelids drooped a little, and she smiled, a smile holding provocation and promise and a hint of slightly malicious triumph.
Shard took a breath, and said, 'Damn you!' Anger and laughter mingled in his eyes as he tipped her face to his and closed his lips almost brutally on hers.
She bore it well, her head tipped back over his arm.
her body passive against him. But when he raised his head, she shivered. His fingers moved down her arm and he said, 'You're cold. I'll have to leave you while I get help.'
'No,' she said. 'I can manage if you help me.'
'I'll hurt you --'
'Is that new?' she asked gently, and he winded.
'At least let me bandage it first,' he said. 'I'll get the first aid box from my car.'
With a firm bandage on the ankle and his arm hooked about her waist, half carrying her, Elise managed the ascent. It was slow, and when they reached the top she had to lie back on the grass while the wrenching pain subsided, but she made it. And when she made to rise and lean on Shard again, he picked her up bodily and placed her in his car.
'Do you want anything from your car?' he asked her.
'My bag, 1 suppose.'
He got it for her and locked the car, tossing the keys in her lap. 'I'll get someone to pick it up tomorrow,' he said.
They called at a doctor's surgery on the way home. He inspected the damage and recommended cold compresses, rest and a bandage. And then Shard took Elise home.
He helped her into bed and asked, 'Anything you want?'
'A drink,' she said, and he laughed, and went to get her one, returning with whisky for himself and a strong gin and lemon for her.
It wasn't until she began to feel lightheaded that she realised she hadn't eaten since breakfast.
Shard was sitting on the bed, sipping his whisky and looking at her. Elise leaned her head back against the pillow and said, 'I don't think I should have had this, on an empty stomach.'
'I'll get something to eat in a minute,' he said. 'When did you go out there?'
'This morning.'
'Lord! You must be starving!'
He made to move, but she stopped him with a hand on his arm. 'Not really. Finish your drink.'
The slight movement had made her head swim a little, but as she sank back again on to the pillow, it cleared, and she felt that her brain was functioning more perfectly than it had for a long time.
'I should be sorry that I frightened you,' she said. 'But I'm not.' He looked up then, a lurking flame in his eyes, and she smiled at him. 'I didn't know until I saw your face then—that you love me.' Her eyes dropped as she went on, 'I know it isn't a word you like, for some reason. You distrust it, but I don't know another name for what was in your eyes when you found me today. And—perhaps you won't believe me, but no matter how it seemed, or what I said, or what you thought, Shard, I married you for one reason—because I love you. I was afraid to admit it, at first because the strength of it scared me, when I was very young, and I'd been taught to distrust my feelings and use my head. My feelings told me you were everything I would ever want, but I tried to use my head and I thought—I thought you might be using me. And when you took Granddad's money and went away, that seemed to confirm that what I'd done was the sensible thing. Only you'll never know how hard it was ‑'
'I only took the loan because I couldn't bear to stay in this country, knowing you were married to another man,' he told her. 'Your grandfather had offered me a stake before, but I turned it down. He used to give me hints and advice, when he discovered what I was after, eventually. But I did intend to make it on my own. It was his idea, you know, going into the Australian company—he heard about it through an old friend of his, and decided it was just for me. I owe him a lot more than money.' He paused. 'You made a crack once about not expecting him to get it back. I thought you were just having a go at me—you were in a malicious mood that night. Did you really think that I'd taken advantage of the old man and cheated him of his money?'
'After failing to get me to marry you—yes,' she said in a low voice. 'We all did.' 'Gary didn't,' he said quietly. 'I'm sure of it,' She looked up. 'We don't see much of Gary these days. I suppose he would have put me straight, if I'd talked to him. Please try to understand. Shard. I had all the advantages that you looked on with such contempt, but I'd never been encouraged to have much faith in my own judgment. Even Peter made decisions for me, gave me advice. It seemed natural, because he was much older —and when we were married I was barely nineteen. I wanted to believe in you, but I was frightened. And then you never mentioned love. Do you remember telling me you didn't need it?'
'That isn't exactly what I said,' he told her slowly. 'I said I could live without you—I didn't say it would be easy. And I said I wouldn't ask for your love --'
'And that you had no use for love.'
'Until then. You're right about my distrusting the word. I knew I wanted you desperately, but I didn't want to give it that name. What we felt for each other was so real, so strong and deep—I didn't want to label it with the same word that's so often used to describe some of the most immoral and dishonest transactions between people.'
He saw the surprise in her face and laughed a little. 'I don't mean the buying and selling of sexual favours,' he explained, 'although God knows there are different kinds and degrees of that, and a marriage certificate is sometimes nothing more than another form of it. But the other things that are done in the name of love—women asking men to sell their integrity for money, in the name of love. Men asking women to give up work that they enjoy, that fulfils them as human beings. Parents expecting children to live their lives according to the parents' standards, and never allowing them to develop standards of their own even though they're grown. Childr
en who expect to be parasites on their parents all their lives, lovers manipulating each other's guilt. People who think other people have a duty to make themselves miserable in order to bring happiness to those they're supposed to love. And people like you—who turn their backs on real happiness because someone says "I love you, and you owe it to me to love me back." No one has a right to be loved. It's something that's given freely or can't be given at all.'
'Yes,' Elise said softly, 'I think I'm beginning to understand.'
'I hope so. I hope you understand that I wouldn't beg you to love me, that I accepted the fact that you had other reasons for marrying me, and tried to give you everything I thought you wanted from it.'
'I wanted you --' she said. 'Only you, all of you. But you didn't give me that. You always withheld some part of yourself from me. The only thing you didn't give me was the one thing I really wanted.'
'I couldn't. Not while I thought you weren't wholly committed to me. Last night, I tried to make you admit that you were.'
'I am. I tried to tell you that before—but you wouldn't believe me.'
'At the time you didn't sound very convincing.'
'I suppose not. I was afraid to tell you the real reason why I was hesitant to marry you—that I didn't dare have faith in your honesty. You weren't being very receptive that night, and I thought that might make you more bitter with me than you were already.'
'In the mood that I was in then,' he admitted, 'perhaps it might have.'
'You've been under a strain, these last weeks,' she said quietly. 'Everything you've worked for is in danger, isn't it? I know the business is your life.'
'No. You are. If I'd been sure of you it wouldn't have mattered nearly so much. When I heard that I was likely to be involved in the crash, the only thing I could think of was that it might mean losing you. All the way home I was in a cold sweat thinking about you walking out on me because I wasn't what you wanted in a husband any more. And when I got here and found Cole kissing you it was as though it had already happened. Do you know how much you sounded like lovers when I walked in? Any other time I'd have listened to you both and known it wasn't true, but then the whole world was crashing round my ears, anyway. It just looked like part of the pattern.'
'I hoped you'd phone,' she told him, 'and tell me that you didn't mean it.'
'I had to put it out of my mind. I had to concentrate on what I had to do—what had to be done, I thought, to give me any chance of holding you.'
He stood up suddenly and walked a few paces from the bed, then turned and faced her, his eyes suddenly accusing. 'But you wouldn't have been here if I had phoned. You were with your parents, weren't you?'
'After the first morning—yes. I couldn't stand waiting for a call that never came.'
'You didn't tell me that you'd been with them. The first I knew of it was the next morning, when they came here and Howard offered me a job. And your mother said she'd talked you into coming back to me because it was a wife's duty to stick by her husband.'
Elise clenched her hand on the sheet. 'Did she say that?'
'Not straight out, but that was the gist of the hints she was handing out. I also gathered that she wouldn't find it entirely convenient to have a pregnant and separated daughter to explain away to her fancy friends.'
'I never left you,' she told him. 'I never had any such intention, and my mother knew it. I told her I wanted to stay until you came back, just a few days.'
'And she didn't lecture you about your duty and advise you to remember your marriage vows?'
Elise hesitated. 'Yes, she did, more or less.'
Shard's mouth tightened, and she added quickly, 'I can't help that. Shard! I didn't ask for her advice, but she gave it all the same, and it was quite off-beam and totally unnecessary. I didn't stay with you out of a sense of duty, or because of what people might say, or even because of the baby. I just couldn't think of being anywhere but with you as long as you're on this earth, and you want me.'
She looked at him steadily and watched the hard suspicion vanish from his eyes. 'I want you,' he said. 'As long as I'm on this earth, and beyond.'
'Please come here,' she said softly. 'You look so far away from me, and I can't bear that.'
He came to her swiftly, dropping on to the bed and taking her hand.
'Do you know,' he said, 'when I first came in today 1 was afraid you'd left me. I wasn't sure how you felt about me after last night, and when I came in the place seemed so empty. And you left no note.'
'I expected to be back,' she explained.
'How was I to know --? I phoned your mother and a couple of other people, and Cole --'
She looked up, pulling her hand away. 'You didn't still think --'
'I wasn't thinking.' He took her hand again and held it tighter. 'I was too terrified to think. Then I went through your wardrobe and decided you surely would have taken something if you'd left. And in your workroom—you'd left those drawings scattered about. I've never seen them before.'
He looked up and she smiled. 'Do you like them?'
'I was too frantic by then to know if I like them or not. But I do know who they were.'
Elise said, 'I think he's going to look like that—our son.'
Shard's hands came up and he pulled her close. 'Supposing it's a daughter?'
'Will you mind?'
'I'll love it.'
She stirred and looked up at him, tipping her head back. 'Love?'
'Yes. As children should be loved, for themselves, not possessively or for what they give in return, or because they're an extension of their parents.'
'Yes,' she said. 'And if we haven't much money it won't matter. We can still give them the important things.'
'We can. But I forgot to tell you --' his hand was on her hair as it lay back against his shoulder, 'we won't be in receivership after all. I think we're going to be okay, with a bit of help from the bank and one or two clients who have faith in the company.'
'That's nice,' she murmured.
'Nice?'
The way you're stroking my hair,' she explained.
Shard's narrowed eyes glinted down at her. 'Did you hear what I said?'
'Mm. That's nice, too. Does it mean we can have our house after all? And keep the land?'
'Yes. The house may be delayed a bit, but we'll have it. It's a top priority. An altered plan, though, with room for children.'
'I'm glad. I didn't want to lose the land. Although it doesn't matter so much, now.'
'Why?'
'I thought—it reminded me of our honeymoon, and I hoped that maybe it would bring us as close as we were then. Now we're even closer because we understand each other better than we did then. So it doesn't matter where we live or how much money we have. Oh, Shard'—her hand touched his cheek—'forgive me for the years I took from you, and gave to another man. Do you blame me very much for that?'
'Not now. At first it was hard to take. Later I realised that you were very young and I was too impatient. I scared you and you ran for cover. Too far and too fast, but it was what you thought you wanted, and you had the right to make the choice.' He paused and said, 'I'm glad you weren't unhappy with him.'
'I cheated him,' she said. 'He never knew, and I tried to make it up to him by being a good wife in every way that mattered. But in my heart there was always you. You were right—I had no right to wear his ring, feeling as I did about you.'
A little flame leapt in Shard's eyes. He kissed her with lingering deliberation, his fingers lightly touching her breast. Then he pulled away and said, 'I promised you something to eat. Aren't you hungry?'
She took his hand and put it over her beating heart. 'Yes,' she said, settling back against the pillow. Her smile teased. 'Aren't you?'
His hand moved warmly over her, his eyes glittering with desire. He leaned over her and murmured in her ear, 'I was talking about food!'
'I wasn't,' she whispered, and turned her laughing mouth to meet his kiss as he gathered her into his arms.
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