by Margaret Way
Ashe shrugged. “Once they start they can’t stop. It’s a tough world out there for young people these days. The availability, the peer pressure. Sometimes it must get so oppressive they feel driven to conform. Martin felt he lived very much in his father’s shadow. He had the morbid fear he could never measure up, never meet the high expectations he thought were expected of him. His own harsh judgment, I have to tell you. His parents loved him. He was sent down from Oxford. He and another one of his druggie pals. Rich kids. It was all downhill from there. His sense of self-esteem gave out.”
“It upset you, didn’t it?”
“It greatly upset everyone who knew him. Death is no victory, no way out. What it was, was a tragic waste of a young life.”
She could see he was still trying to grapple with Martin Stewart’s death. “What did he look like?” she asked after a long moment, because somehow it seemed right.
Ashe exhaled heavily. “The girls used to call him Adonis. He was very handsome, as I said, but he settled for looking louche. That was the image he wanted to project.” He was speaking now as though under a spell. “Martin had thick blond hair that he wore quite long.” He touched his shoulders as an indicator. “He had lots of ‘friends’ but no close friends. The real friends were very worried about him. They tried to help him so he cut them out of his life. His so called ‘friends’ brought out the worst in him. But that was where he wanted to stay although it was a life sentence.”
“I’m so sorry,” Cate said. “I can only guess at the agony of his parents and his friends. Wasn’t it Aristotle who said: The gods had no greater torment than for a mother to lose her child?”
“He might have said father too,” Ashe answered for the fathers of the world.
“Maybe mothers have the edge in suffering? Not everyone has the strength to fight for life. To some, it must seem easier to throw it away.”
He nodded grimly, looked away.
“Tell me something, Ashe.” She felt compelled to forge ahead. “Do I resemble him at all?” Her question was calm enough but her heart was beating too fast for comfort.
“Sorry?” The sound of her voice brought him out of his reverie.
“Do I look like Martin? Straightforward question.”
“God, Catrina!” He found himself staring back at her as though looking for enlightenment from above. Realisation began to press in on him. He had thought he was beyond surprise. Hadn’t her colouring always struck him as familiar? She wasn’t a copy of Martin, but she certainly could have been his sister!
“Hello, Ashe!” She wanted to jolt him into speech. “At least it’s not a hell no!”
“Catrina, this is all too strange.” The expression on his handsome face was both proud and moody. “If I said yes, I could be putting you on the wrong track entirely. Why don’t you discuss it with Stella? That woman knows the story. Maybe the whole story. She would never have laid eyes on Martin, but she did know Rafe and as far as I recall she went to school with Rafe’s sister, Penelope.”
The veiled attack on Stella wasn’t lost on her. “Stella has hardly said a blessed thing about either of them.”
“She is without doubt a very secretive woman.” Even a ruthless woman. Ashe’s gaze was intense and highly speculative.
“This is an odd conversation we’re having.” Cate too was feeling decidedly uneasy.
“Well, it is odd, isn’t it? Stella migrating to Australia to save her younger sister’s reputation; refusing to acknowledge your true relationship, claiming she adopted you, presumably from an agency. Pretty hard to plead that down to a misdemeanour.”
The misdemeanours were beginning to pile up. “She’s very sorry for it now,” Cate said.
“Maybe she could purge her sorrow telling you the truth?” he suggested crisply.
“Maybe it’s too bad to tell—ever thought of that? I never questioned Stella, you know. I was always aware I looked different. Both Stella and Annabel had dark hair and dark eyes. Things might have been different had I been a carbon copy of my biological mother. As I’m not, I must take after my father. Whoever he may be,” she said gravely. “You’ve experienced firsthand what deception can do, Ashe, your own mother forging a letter. People do it all the time. Letters, documents, anything where they have something to gain. Anyway—” she rose with determination to her feet “—I didn’t come here to rehash the past.”
“Then why did you come?” His blue eyes burned over her.
“You already know. One, you more or less compelled me. Two, so I could fix a time for you to see Jules. In my company, of course.”
“Do you really think I’m going to jump on a plane with him?” he returned very dryly.
She made a mock face of apology.
“Actually I’d like to spend the whole day with him. Maybe this coming Sunday? We could go for a drive, have lunch somewhere. The Hunter Valley isn’t all that far away, is it? The Blue Mountains, boat trip on the Harbour? One could never tire of seeing it from the water. Or as a seven-year-old Julian might like a trip to Taronga Park Zoo. I understand the location is fantastic with the best vantage points on Sydney Harbour. Maybe we can leave it to Julian to choose.”
“We call him Jules,” she said. Julian seemed to mark him as Ashe’s son.
Ashe too was on his feet. He had moved too close to her, causing a swift reaction. Her heart was beating like a bird imprisoned in her chest.
“His father calls him Julian,” he said in a voice that would have crushed another woman. But not Cate. “We can introduce the Jules later as we get to know each other.” He had moved even nearer. The space between them was thrumming with heat. “So what time Sunday?”
“Ooh...” Something further was coming. “Nine suit you? I think Jules would like the zoo.”
“Then the zoo it is,” he said with just a touch of mockery.
She knew she mustn’t touch him. Or he touch her. She knew she was only kidding herself. “Goodnight, Ashe.”
“Goodnight, Catrina.” He caught her wrist, twisted his fingers around it. “I’ll come with you to your car.” His eyes were full of strange lights.
“No need.” Holding her hand, he had to register her whole body as drawn as taut as a wire. She felt as hot as if she were coming down with a fever.
“I’ve no intention of letting you go alone. A beautiful woman on her own is a target for unwanted attention.”
“I’ve never had any trouble. Really, Ashe.” She was in far more trouble where she was.
“Why sound so edgy? As much as part of me hates to admit it, I want to keep you beside me for ever.”
“You sound like you’re in crisis,” she taunted. “You despise your own weakness.”
“Don’t you have the same problem?” he challenged, a note of cynicism creeping in.
“I’ve learned my lesson, Ashe. It wouldn’t work. Then or now.” She shifted away a fraction.
“Sure you didn’t write that note?” He lifted an indolent hand to remove the pretty art-nouveau clasp that held back her hair. “There, doesn’t that feel better?” he asked, unrepentant, as her beautiful hair, set free, slid forward in a smooth motion.
“You can’t take that clip,” she protested. “It’s an antique piece.” He had put it in his pocket.
“I’ll give it back,” he said. “Promise.”
There was such an extraordinary aura about him, a whole catalogue of advantages, the natural authority, the seeming calm and underneath a huge reserve of passion. It was shattering to know even if she wanted to, she couldn’t break her bond with him.
“I don’t know what we’re doing here, Ashe, but if it’s a ploy to soften me up, it won’t work. You can’t take Jules. My son is my life.” The tremulous note in her voice gave her away.
“What if I take you as well?” he suggested, staring down at her in such a way it fired her blood. “Like it or not Julian is part of us both. What do you think he would say if you told him I was his father? Told him how circumstance ripped us apa
rt. Told him how I lived to marry you, to make you my wife? What would he say if I told him when my back was turned, you vanished out of my life never to tell me or him we are father and son.”
Of a sudden her nerve failed, ebbed away. “This is emotional blackmail, Ashe.”
“I don’t care what it is,” he returned bluntly. “It’s the truth.”
“Jules is not ready for the truth, Ashe,” she cried, knowing she was becoming overexcited. “I was wrong to come here.”
A shadow crossed his handsome face. “But you’ve been wrong all along. I’m not going to give up my son, Catrina.” There was a quiet but deadly firmness in his voice.
Colour rose beneath her skin as he confirmed her own thought. She turned on him, racked by conflicting emotions. “So where is it all going to end?”
He looked at her sharply weighing that up. “Don’t you feel some guilt?” Anger spilled from eyes that were bluer than any Burmese sapphire.
“If we’re going to make denunciations, what about you?” she hit back incautiously. “I’d say we’re about even when it comes to making mistakes.”
“Okay, okay.” He partly agreed. “Only my plan is to put it right. You’re not married. Neither am I. In a sense our lives were blown apart. Now I want you back in my life again. You’re the mother of my son. I remind you that you were born of an English mother and almost certainly an English father. Don’t you remember how you fitted in? You didn’t think you would, but you did. The English side of you came to the fore. Julian’s long vacation is coming up. May I make a suggestion? You could think about spending Christmas in England with me. You and Julian, Stella too if she wants to come. I would think she would like to return to her birthplace.”
“What, as a visitor?” she retorted hotly when she felt a wave of near-happy anticipation. “Stella and my mother were born at Radclyffe Hall, Ashe. But you got it all. So does that mean you get to make all the decisions too?”
“Go file a complaint,” he said caustically. “It was all legal, Catrina. Your grandfather, might I point out, made me his heir. Of course it would have been my father, but I was next in line. Julian one day may very well be the sixth Baron Wyndham. You can’t change that.”
“Try me!” She threw up her head. “Jules has already confided his ambition to anyone who will listen. He’s aiming to become Prime Minister of Australia. He wants to put things right. He wants to be in a position to make life better for everyone. He won’t change. He won’t turn into an upper-class English boy packed off to boarding school as soon as he can toddle.”
Ashe heard the conviction in her voice. He had to face the fact she could be right about their son and his long-term aims. He had fallen in love with Cate, reared in Australia where life was very open, confident and remarkably frank. Hadn’t she been different from all the other girls in his circle?
“Understand me clearly,” he said. “What Julian wants is important to me as well. I would never force a decision on him. But you’ve had our son for the past seven years. I am going to redress that. You can make it easy, or you can make it hard. It’s up to you.”
“So what roles do we play?” She swallowed with difficulty.
“I’ll tell my sisters quietly all they need to know.”
“I doubt they can keep it to themselves.” She managed a derisory laugh.
“We all have experience of keeping things to ourselves, Catrina. You would know that better than most. Julian is their nephew, therefore they will do everything to protect him.”
“In effect what I’m seeing is a Carlisle takeover.”
His eyes flashed. “I’m not saying that at all, Catrina. I’m saying nothing concrete at the moment.”
It was crisis point. The breath shook in her throat as she said, “But you will. When and if you do get to know more about Jules you might have to forfeit at least some of your plans. Since Jules was born I have been solely responsible for him.”
“Because you omitted to inform me, his father,” he shot back, rather bleakly.
That omission now hurt her. She strained away from him, but he held her fast.
“Cate!” he groaned.
She felt her heart constrict. “What happens if he doesn’t like you and your family?”
“That’s the worst possible scenario. Have you enough grace to accord me some understanding on this?”
“Not yet.” He was moving much too fast. “Don’t make me hate you, Ashe.”
“I think I can handle it.” His smile held a degree of self-mockery. “Besides you don’t hate me at all. Life has caught up with us, Cate.”
“But I’m not the Cate I used to be. Poor vulnerable little Cate. I’m another me. I have another life.”
He had the sense he had a tigress by the tail. “Your life was supposed to be with me. Remember what you called it—destiny.”
He had touched a psychic nerve. “Destiny did a darn good job of mucking us up.”
Within seconds their confrontation had moved from a kind of maddened frustration to a violent need to come together. To physically connect. There were layers upon layers of yearning beneath the conflict that was at best only skin deep.
“What I want to do now—what I need to do now is kiss you,” he said in a voice seductive with want. His eyes devoured her face, came to rest on her mouth. “Your mouth is no different from what it used to be, do you know that? It’s perfect. Perfect for me. Perfect for kissing. God, I couldn’t count the kisses.” His arms enfolded her, one hand very firm at her back.
Her whole body was pierced with awareness. “What is this going to solve, Ashe?” She knew where they were inexorably heading.
“That neither of us are going to fall in love with anyone else?”
“We’ve still got time.” Only residual pride allowed her to say that.
“A lifetime won’t be long enough for either of us to forget. I finally have you, Cate.”
He looked down at her with intensity. He was mesmerising her and she was letting him. The effect was spine-tingling. “You think you do.”
“I know I do,” he said in his resonant voice. “The image of you has stayed with me. Cate, the eighteen-year-old girl, ravishingly pretty, now a true beauty. The fine bone structure of your face is more apparent. Your skin is as translucent as porcelain.”
She knew she could have pulled away. Ashe would never handle her roughly. Only she stood there, held by his hypnotic gaze.
“Did you ever just once mean you loved me?” he asked as though he was trying to make sense of it all.
“I don’t want to go back that far,” she pleaded. Everything was totally different. Everything was the same.
“Let me remind you.” He tipped up her chin, only to trail a line of kisses over her cheek to behind her ear. His mouth moved lower to nuzzle her neck, sending thrill after thrill shooting through her. How had she ever thought she could stop caring? His roving mouth came to rest in the warm hollow above her collarbone. “Remember this?” he asked dreamily.
She felt the coaxing caress of his hand. “Maybe...” Her voice shook. There was more to come. Nothing she could or would do to stop it. She was locked into a spell. She never had been able to withstand the spells Ashe wove. She was programmed to respond.
His mouth came down over hers, almost but not quite kissing her. “Seven long years,” he muttered. “Misery for me. But a great thing happened to you, didn’t it, Cate? You had our son.” He pulled her in very tightly as though she would never be free to go.
A warm languor was sweeping through her, robbing her legs of strength. She had an idea she was leaning into him for support. She felt so light-headed it was as if she were weightless. His mouth was moving over her face and neck... He bent her backwards, kissing the shadowed cleft between her breasts.
Desire welled up as if from a gushing spring. “You hurt me badly.”
“You hurt me.”
“It still matters, Ashe,” she gasped, hollow with yearning.
“Of course i
t does.” The pads of his thumbs were working her erect nipples.
Reason was obliterated. She closed her eyes the better to lock in the ecstasy. No one had ever made love to her like Ashe. His hand was on the zipper of her dress. He pulled it down and the silken fold of fabric fell away from her, sliding to her feet. She stood in her undergarments. “I want you so badly,” he said in such a quiet voice, it was barely a breath. “Don’t fight me on this, Cate.” His hands covered the slopes of her warm, smooth breasts.
I’m going to die of longing, she thought. Only just coping, she eased herself into him, her flesh melting like candle wax. “One last time?”
“And the one after, and the one after that...”
He lifted her slowly, easily, carrying her into the bedroom and laying her down on the king-sized bed. “You never know, you might like it. You certainly used to.”
They were staring into one another’s eyes, each seeking their own reflection. “It was different back then. I’m not the same. I was young.”
His laugh was gently mocking. “You’re the same.” He passed a masterly hand over her body. It visibly quivered at his touch, awaiting further excitation. She was lying prone on the bed, her long legs extended, yet she felt as though he were drawing her up. “People change, but what we had lasts. I called it love. God knows what you called it, but you want me just as much as I want you.” He lowered himself onto the side of the bed studying her, so beautiful, so womanly, so made for loving. “Go on, deny it. If you can.” He began to caress her, his hand moving slowly over her, his palms against her flesh, her breasts, her stomach, his fingers sliding below the line of her briefs moving downwards, pressing, sending fiery sensations shooting through her. The sense of excitement, of utter intoxication, was extreme; the bursts of pleasure were such she thought she would come to a shuddering climax merely from the rotating movements of his long, caressing fingers.
That harsh breathing she suddenly realised was hers. She sounded very agitated. God, how she needed this! Her whole body was flowering, opening up to him. The needs of her body were in total control now. Her skin glittered with a faint dew as pressure built. She felt a crazed desperation to have him inside her.