by Sara Craven
It was a habit she hadn’t indulged in for a long while, and she knew she was only playing for time. But Logan showed no sign of impatience, or even that he was aware of her delaying tactics. He watched her in silence, his face cynical and even slightly bored, as if he was witnessing a third-rate striptease performance. He made no move to help her or touch her in any way, and when at last she stood there, trying to shield herself with her arms, she suddenly remembered the evening he had begun to make love to her at his flat―his kisses, the gentleness of his hands-and a hard knot of misery welled up inside her.
‘Tears already! ‘ He gave a soft laugh. ‘And I’ve hardly started on you yet. I’m the man who knows how to put the pressure on and keep it there―remember? Your own words, darling.’ He peeled off his sweater and threw it on the bed, then began to unbuckle the belt of his pants. ‘And I intend to make you regret every last syllable.’
‘I regret them now.’ She moistened her lips desperately. ‘Logan, for God’s sake! You’ll make us hate each other .. .’
‘The word is love.’ he said. ‘We make love, not hate. You’ll be surprised to discover how closely one can resemble the other. Or you will be by morning. Don’t stand there shivering, darling. Get into bed.’ She did as she was told, closing her eyes, and pulling the sheet up to-her chin. Presently the light went out and there was a faint protesting creak from the mattress as Logan lowered his weight on to the bed beside her. She lay there rigid with tension, waiting for him to touch her, dreading the resumption of the brutality he had inflicted on her downstairs.
He said, ‘You can start breathing again, Briony. I don’t intend to rape you. I never did. Downstairs you asked me if I wanted you to grovel. Well, I think I do and I think you will. But you won’t be begging for mercy. On the contrary, you’ll be pleading with me to put you out of your misery.’
He touched her then, his fingers cupping the softness of one breast, caressing, teasing, arousing. She felt a shock of desire go through her, and heard him laugh again.
‘You’re going to pay a high price for your initiation into womanhood, my sweet.’ his voice taunted her from the darkness. ‘I hope you’ll think it’s worth it.’ Lying alone in the cold, silent room, she remembered.
She remembered everything. At first she had been angry, and determined that his cynical expectations would not be fulfilled. Closing her mind against him had been relatively simple, but there was no guard, no restraint she could place upon her slowly awakening senses. Quite gently at first, then with growing insistence, Logan used his hands and mouth to bring every inch of her body to quivering vibrant life. One by one, she surrendered her pitiful defences to his expertise as a lover, and waited for the moment of consummation.
But it did not arrive, and slowly, gradually realisation began to dawn that this was exactly what he intended.
She was to be reduced―or exalted―to a state of wordless, mindless passion, and then abandoned there in a kind of sensual limbo from which only he could provide her release. And that he had no intention of releasing her, he soon made clear.
She was clinging to him, her fingers stretched over the smooth muscularity of his back as he leaned over her, her lips parted as she moaned his name, willing him to kiss her mouth, to hold her, to come into her.
Her eyes had grown accustomed to the darkness and she could see his face quite plainly as he bent towards her, the aquamarine eyes studying her with a curious intentness, his mouth twisting suddenly in a small cruel smile.
He said softly, ‘Have I made you want me, Briony? ‘Now, make me want you.’
Then he was moving, not towards her but away, turning his back on her. She lay beside him, dizzy and feverish with the desire he had roused in her, stunned by a rejection she could barely comprehend. She wanted to hit out, to scream, to weep with torment and frustration, but instead she made herself lie very still beside him, gazing with burning eyes into the shadows of the room until the soft regularity of his breathing told her that he had fallen asleep. Then and only then did she relax her rigidity and allow herself the luxury of tears.
She cried in silence, her throat and chest convulsed in pain, her fist pressed to her mouth to prevent one whimper escaping. Slowly, as she cried, the deep ache in her body began to subside, and eventually she fell into a shallow, restless doze.
Almost before she had opened her unwilling eyes to face a grey dawn, she had known that she was alone in the bed. She raised herself up wearily on one elbow and stared round the room, registering that Logan’s clothes had gone. She threw back the covers and got out, shivering as the morning chill struck at her naked body, and reached for her own things.
As she walked towards the door she felt something tangle round her foot. She glanced down and saw it was her tom nightdress. With a grimace, she bent and picked it up. This was one garment she never wanted to see again as long as she lived, she thought, and she could make sure that she never did.
Her footsteps sounded very loud on the stairs, but they echoed emptily, as if the house was deserted. It took all her courage to open the living room door and go in, but there was no one there. The ashes were grey, but still warm in the fireplace, and after a moment’s hesitation she screwed her nightdress into a ball and dropped it on top of them before setting a lighted match to it. It flared up briefly and was gone.
Very symbolic, Briony thought almost dispassionately.
Her soup bowl, she noticed, had vanished from the table, and she found it washed and on the draining rack in the kitchen. There was evidence that Logan had made himself coffee and toast before he had departed―where?
The back door was unbolted, and the kettle was still warm, which seemed to suggest he had not gone far.
As she began to refill the kettle for her own coffee, she saw him coming the way she had come down from the fell the previous night. She made herself stay in the kitchen and go on with the paraphernalia of coffee brewing as if unaware of his approach, but she was forced to acknowledge his presence as he unlatched the back door and came in.
She turned slightly and saw him standing in the doorway watching her, his head thrown back slightly. He looked arrogant and forbidding, and his brows were drawn together frowningly.
‘Good morning.’ Briony said quietly.
‘A conventional opening if not a truthful one.’ He came into the kitchen kicking the door shut behind him.
She shrugged, even managed a smile. ‘I thought I’d play safe for once. Do you want some coffee?’
‘No, thank you.’ he said. ‘I had some earlier, before I went walking. Now I want to talk.’
‘I don’t think there’s anything to talk about.’ She added hot water to the coffee granules as if her life depended on getting the formula just right. ‘You made your point more than adequately last night. I should have been more grateful, but as you’ll appreciate, I wasn’t seeing things too clearly just then. Now, everything is perfectly simple. We can go back to London and live our separate lives, and I’ll apply for an annulment. It will be quicker than a divorce. I think you have to wait two years for that.’
There was a long, still silence after she had finished speaking. She put milk and sugar into her coffee and stirred it with minute attention.
‘That was an interesting little speech,’ Logan said slowly. ‘Have you been rehearsing it for long?’
‘I haven’t been rehearsing it at all.’ she said. ‘But I think it sums up the situation pretty well.’
‘It sums up nothing.’ He came and stood behind her, close but not quite touching, so that she could feel the warmth of his breath on her neck. His voice sounded different, softer but more urgent. He said, ‘It’s cold in this kitchen. Come where it’s warmer and talk to me. Better still, come’ back to bed with me. I’ll make you forget last night ever happened.’
She said, and her voice was like ice, ‘You’ll make me forget nothing, Logan, do you hear. And please don’t come any closer or put your hands on me. I’d rather die than have you touch
me again.’
The web of tension spun around them, closing them in. Briony closed her eyes awaiting the explosion, the inevitable outburst. She gripped the edge of the formica work surface until it cut painfully into her hand. She sensed rather than felt Logan’s withdrawal, and her relief was so overwhelming that her legs nearly gave way under her.
His voice was cold and sardenic as he said, ‘Stay alive, Briony, stay alive. I don’t want you on my conscience as well.’
Then he turned away, and she heard him cross the living room and go out, closing the door behind him.
CHAPTER FIVE
BRIONY sat up in bed, pushing her tumbled hair out of her eyes. It did not do any good to relive these painful memories, she told herself angrily. All it did was demonstrate the importance that they still assumed in her life ―a fruitless reminder if ever there was one.
Suddenly restless, she flung back the covers and got out of bed, padding over to the window and jerking back the curtain. The room was full of icy draughts and she shivered uncontrollably as she stared out into the darkness.
The air was whirling with white flakes, and the landscape outside was totally alien under its muffling blanket of snow. She fought a rising sense of panic as she realised that this was not an isolated snowstorm to be followed by a rapid thaw, but that winter had caught her here under the same roof with Logan, and seemed intent on keeping her here. Her hopes of a speedy and discreet exit as soon as daylight dawned were fading rapidly.
But I can’t stay here, she thought wildly. I should have got out earlier, while the going was good. The snow wasn’t nearly as deep then. It couldn’t have been. Logan got here; I could have left―I should have left. Now it’s too late.Too late. The words seemed to reverberate inside her head, and she lifted a shaking hand to her temple before turning away from the window with a last defeated look at the blizzard raging on the other side of the glass.
She got reluctantly back into bed and lay down, trying to compose herself for sleep, but it was an almost impossible task. The memories she had revived were too raw to be easily put aside.
She tossed and turned, punching her pillow into shape, twitching at the bedclothes, trying to deny the truth which was beginning to force itself upon her all too conscious mind. Reliving the miseries of her wedding night had not been total grief. They had aroused her too.
It was not altogether surprising, she tried to excuse herself. After all, it was in this very bed that Logan had kissed and caressed her to the point of no return, to the point of madness, and then turned from her.
For a few dark, dangerous’moments it would have been fatally easy to imagine that he had actually been beside her, his mouth warm and sensuous on her breasts, his exploring hands a pleasurable torment.
She sank her teeth into her lower lip, trying to force the image of him out of her mind, loathing herself for her body’s betrayal, as she had loathed herself in that grey dawn months before.
Her sale comfort was that at least Logan did not know that she was lying here wanting him.
Oh God, she had admitted it at last. She wanted him, and she had never stopped wanting him, in spite of the things that humiliation and the fear of another rejection had made her say.
She’d wanted him on that bleak dreadful drive later in the day back to London. He’d driven too fast, fiddling all the time with the radio, turning from channel to channel in search of music until she’d felt like screaming. But it had been important not to scream, she remembered. It had been important to lean back in her seat calm and uncaring on the surface, and pray that in his turn he would be too angry to probe beneath the surface and reveal how fragile her defence really was.
They were in London before he said, ‘Where do you want me to drop you―at your father’s, or your aunt’s?’
She said tonelessly, ‘Take me to the house, please.’ She smiled tightly. ‘Best to get it over with, as quickly as possible.’
‘Oh, yes,’ he said very drily. ‘Much the best. With any luck you’ll soon be able to pretend that none of it ever happened at all.’
He didn’t speak again. He even fetched her case from the boot in silence, and only nodded as she said rather helplessly, ‘Well―goodbye.’
She watched the car go down the street and turn the corner, and felt something die inside her. She still had her key, so she let herself in. Mrs Lambert was crossing the hall, carrying a tray with a decanter and some glasses, and she started so violently on seeing Briony that she nearly let the whole tray fall to the ground.
‘It’s all right.’ Briony forced a reassuring smile to her lips. ‘It―it’s not a ghost. It’s really me.’
‘Miss Briony―but what are you doing here? Sir Charles said―we thought . . .’ Mrs Lambert stared nervously past Briony. ‘Are you alone?’
‘Yes, quite alone.’ Briony closed the door behind her, and picked up her case. ‘I presume Daddy has been entertaining.’
‘Some Americans,’ Mrs Lambert said almost mechanically.
She was frowning in utter bewilderment. ‘And your ―room’s not ready. Why didn’t you let us know? You see, Miss Briony, we thought .. .’
‘I know what you thought.’ Briony moistened her lips. ‘I don’t want to go into details at the moment, but you’re quite right. I was―married yesterday. But my husband isn’t here with me, and I’m not expecting him. So my old room will be fine. Perhaps you’d let my father know I’m here.’
She walked into the spacious drawing room. It was perfection as usual, not an ornament out of place, not a fallen flower petal to disturb its pristine surface. Not the idea! environment for the return of a prodigal daughter, Briony decided ironically as she looked round her. It was almost as if she had never been away, never cracked the smooth tenor of life in this house.
She sat down on the edge of a sofa as if she was a visitor, and presently Mrs Lambert came in with a tray of coffee and a plate of smoked salmon sandwiches, and the news that she had informed Sir Charles of Briony’s unexpected arrival.
‘What did he say?’ For obvious reasons they had not stopped to eat on the journey, and Briony suddenly realised that she was ravenously hungry as she reached for a sandwich.
‘Oh, Miss Briony !’ There might almost have been tears in Mrs Lambert’s eyes. ‘He looked overwhelmed, really he did―delighted. He’s been so unhappy, it’s been dreadful to see him.’
If Briony had harboured any doubts about her reception, they were dispelled as soon as Sir Charles came into the room.
‘My darling girl, you’re home!’ His arms closed round her fiercely. ‘No, don’t talk, don’t say anything just yet. There’ll be plenty of time for explanations later. Tomorrow―when you’re rested. You look exhausted.’ His tone hardened. ‘That degenerate swine! I’ll .. .’
‘No, Daddy.’ Gently, Briony released herself. ‘There’s no need for you to do anything. I’ve left Logan, it’s true, and later on I’ll be applying for an annulment.’
‘An annulment?’ Sir Charles stared at her as if he did not believe his ears. ‘Oh, my darling child, thank heavens you’ve been spared that at least!’
Briony smiled. ‘I’ve been spared nothing.’ she said, almost conversationally. ‘But you’re quite right, I am very tired. If my room’s ready, I would like to lie down.’
‘Of course, of course.’ He was soothing, expansive. His delight in her return was almost tangible, as was his ill-concealed air of triumph. But he refrained from the actual words ‘I told you so.’
Briony slept badly that night, and awoke dreading the tete-a-tete that she feared her father would force on her, but when she went downstairs she learned he had been called away early to U.P.G. where there was a threatened dispute with the print unions over manning levels, so she was spared.
She spent a desultory day around the house, reading magazines supplied by Mrs Lambert, and watching television, something she normally never did in the daytime.
It was from the television news in the early evening that s
he learned that the dispute at U.P.G. had developed into an all-out strike, and that both sides were taking stances behind rather inflammatory statements.
She despised herself for the thought, but she could not help a slight feeling of relief. With a full-blooded strike on his hands, Sir Charles would have enough problems on his mind for the next few days, and his erring daughter’s matrimonial tangle would have to be relegated to the bottom of his list of priorities.
Perhaps by the time the strike was over, some miracle would have happened and she would have grown some kind of extra skin to help her bear her father’s inevitable gloating at least with equanimity. For everyone’s sake, it was best to make him think that Logan and she had realised at once they were not compatible, and had parted on good terms.
But even with her father’s long absences, the days which followed were far from easy. Briony found herself wandering from room to room, unable to settle or to take any real interest in anything. Mrs Lambert, meaning to be kind, insisted on treating her as if she was some kind of invalid, and, worst of all, there was a visit from Aunt Hes to face.