by Penny Jordan
Her preparations for the evening meal finished, she wandered into the drawing-room and picked up the book she had been reading the previous evening. It was an historical saga set during the Wars of the Roses, and the heroine, who was in love with a man fighting on the other side to that favoured by her family, had been caught near the castle of this man and taken to him. He had accused her of being a spy, and she had been forced to admit to him that she had been watching the castle purely to get a glimpse of him, because she loved him. He had not believed her, and now she was sitting in the chamber he had given her while he decided what to do with her, trying desperately to find a way to prove to him the truth of her words.
Kate read on, not really interested in the book, her mind racing ahead to when the men returned, until something caught her eye and then she read feverishly, devouring the printed page and then going back to read it again. She put the book down face-open on the floor and closed her eyes, knowing she had just found the solution to her own dilemma. Heavens, it must have been Fate that had made her pick that particular book from the library. But could she carry it off…could she do what the heroine had done? Could she go up to Dominic’s room tonight and get into his bed, to wait for him there?
As a plan it was hardly practical, she told herself. What about Ricky?
Unwillingly she abandoned the idea, her body aching with disappointment. She so longed for Dominic to make love to her, and if that was wrong, well then, it was wrong. Wasn’t it just as wrong for Ricky to marry her and keep her as a wife who was no real wife?
It was late when the two men returned, and she could smell drink on Ricky’s breath.
However, it was Dominic who apologised, and not her husband, but Kate was so used to his unreliability that she had deliberately not started the evening meal.
Sensing Rick’s mood, she made an excuse of having eaten alone earlier to get her out of sitting down with them. When he was like this Ricky could snipe cruelly at her, and she felt far too fragile tonight to cope with his sarcasm.
Half an hour after she had taken them their coffee, Ricky came into the kitchen and announced belligerently, ‘I’m going out… I’m sick to death of this place!’
‘Out…but what about Dominic?’
‘Dominic?’ His lip curled and if she hadn’t known better, Kate might almost have thought he actively disliked the man he had called his friend. ‘He’s in the study reading the diaries.’
The diaries had been written by Ricky’s grandfather and great-grandfather. Kate had read them herself and had found them fascinating, but Ricky considered them ‘boring’.
‘Where…where are you going?’
‘What the hell has that got to do with you?’ Ricky snarled, adding as he pushed open the back door, ‘And don’t bother waiting up for me… I might not bother coming back—at least not tonight.’
It was no worse than anything he had done before, but even so, Kate felt an aching coil of anger spring to life inside her. Only the knowledge that Ricky was all too likely to react physically and violently to any criticism she might make kept her silent.
She waited for half an hour and then went into the study. Dominic was seated behind the desk, engrossed in what he was reading. She cleared her throat and he looked up frowning slightly, his frown clearing as he saw her.
‘I just came to ask if you would like more coffee. Ricky’s gone out, by the way…’
Her voice died away as he frowned and glanced at his watch. ‘No coffee, thanks,’ he told her. ‘It’s almost eleven and I think I’ll have an early night. All that fresh air today tired me out—I’m not used to it. That’s what living in London does for one. I’ll just finish this chapter and then I’ll go up.’
It was only as she closed the study door that Kate realised with heart-thumping intensity what she intended to do. Quickly, before she could lose her courage, she raced upstairs.
Fifteen minutes later she was lying self-consciously in the middle of the guest room bed, waiting for Dominic to arrive.
He saw her the moment he stepped into the room, his body freezing as he snapped on the light and it illuminated her presence in his bed.
Fear and excitement mingled, making her heart leap and the blood soar through her veins as she saw the way his face changed, male desire dominating every feature, making her tremble with weakness. But even as her brain recognised that she had achieved her objective and her body reacted nervously to that recognition, his face changed, hardening, darkening, until there was nothing but contempt and anger to be read in the bitter darkness of his eyes.
Advancing towards the bed, he paused at the foot of it, to stare at her with cold eyes and a hard mouth. For what seemed like an eternity he simply studied her, his icy scrutiny making her go cold with shame and humiliation. How could she have thought she saw desire in his eyes? She had plainly deluded herself. Now, when it was far too late, she bitterly regretted the impulse that had brought her here to his room…to his bed.
‘Just what the hell do you think you’re doing?’
The harsh words cut into her like thin whips, destroying what was left of her composure.
She desperately wanted to cry, to close her eyes and open them again to discover this was all a nightmare, but some part of her stubbornly refused to allow her to avoid the consequences of her actions. She had been so desperate to prove to herself that she was feminine and desirable that she had made no allowances for this scenario, and had no idea of how to cope with it.
Instead all she could do was stammer painfully, ‘I wanted…’
‘I know quite well what you wanted,’ Dominic cut her off, his mouth twisting as he added coldly, ‘but you’re not going to get it…at least not tonight, and most definitely not from me.’
As he spoke he came towards her, wrenching back the bedclothes and dragging her out of his bed. She averted her eyes from his in shamed distress, her teeth clenching together as she caught his sharply indrawn breath, and felt his fingers bite even more painfully into her arm.
His touch hurt and she whimpered deep in her throat, intimidated by an anger and contempt that seemed to reinforce all the unkind gibes Ricky had thrown at her, and which for some reason seemed to hurt far, far more. As she instinctively arched away from the contact of his flesh against her own, she heard Dominic curse, and then say harshly, ‘It’s too late to play the injured innocent now. My God,’ he added thickly, ‘does Rick know what kind of wanton he’s married? No wonder he drinks and gambles so heavily!’
Kate wanted to protest that he was wrong…but her throat ached too badly, her muscles bunched in agonised protest at the way he had destroyed all her hopes and illusions. She wanted him to go away and leave her alone so that she could go back to her own room and hide herself away, as much from her own inner sense of humiliation as from him, but he didn’t seem disposed to do any such thing.
Swallowing down the painful lump in her throat, she whispered achingly, ‘Please…’ stopping abruptly as she caught the savagery of his indrawn breath and felt the anger tremor through him as his eyes glittered darkly into her own.
‘You ask me for pity?’ he demanded softly. ‘It’s Rick who gets that. This is what you deserve.’
He bent over her, his body blocking out most of the light, fear keeping her body rigid as his mouth ground down on hers. She could taste whisky on his breath; feel the tension and rage in his body as his mouth savaged hers, in a kiss that was a parody of all that a kiss should be.
She felt her inner lip split beneath the pressure of his mouth, and tasted the rusty iron flavour of her own blood. She was under no illusion about what he was doing, and when at last he released her mouth she told herself that she was lucky that previously all she had suffered from her husband had been his indifference. Perhaps she ought to be grateful to Dominic, she thought miserably, forcing down the weak tears building up her eyes, because now she knew just how lucky she was that she had not been forced to endure Ricky’s hatred.
Numbly she was aware of him p
icking her up, and striding towards the door. Terror held her silent as he thrust open her own bedroom door and carried her to the bed, dropping her callously down on to it.
She forced herself to keep her eyes open and her body still until she was sure he had gone, and even then she couldn’t relax. Terror held her completely immobile.
She wasn’t sure how long it was before she was able to get up and stumble into her bathroom. She felt abused, degraded in the worst possible way, more contaminated somehow than if he had been a stranger who had callously attacked and raped her, because then at least she would have been free of the taint of having invited what had happened.
It was only a kiss, she told herself feverishly as she scrubbed at her pale skin…a kiss, that was all, but inside she felt so scarred and mutilated that she didn’t think she would ever be the same again. But the fault was hers…she had been the one who was to blame… And yet she couldn’t help thinking that had she been one of the beauties Ricky openly dated, he would not have reacted to her in the same way…no, it was something in her that had caused him to reject and humiliate her…something in her that was lacking, that made it impossible for any man to feel anything other than disgust for her. At last, exhausted by the trauma of the evening and completely drained of energy, she climbed into bed.
Tonight something inside her had died and she didn’t think it could ever be brought back to life again. From now on she would live her life as though she were a nun. No man would ever get the chance to do to her what first Ricky, and then Dominic, had done.
* * *
The harsh ring of the telephone jerked her abruptly from the past to the present. Numbly Kate reached for the receiver.
‘Kate?’
Sue’s familiar voice sounded faintly anxious.
‘I was just ringing to check that you got back all right—and to apologise again for what happened.’
Soothing her friend’s apprehensions helped her to close her mind on the past, although she could feel the tension flaring inside her when Sue added, ‘I had no idea you and he had met before, or that he was a friend of Rick’s.’
‘Sue, I’ve got some milk on for a cup of chocolate, I’d better go before it boils over.’
It was a lie, but it got her out of answering any more questions. Damn Dominic Harland, Kate thought bitterly as she replaced the receiver. What malign whim of the gods had brought him back into her life just when a clear new future seemed to promise freedom from the pain of the past?
CHAPTER FOUR
IT was lunchtime the following day before Kate felt as though she was beginning to get Dominic Harland’s unwanted presence on the fringes of her mind, back into proper perspective, and that alone was disturbing.
She had promised herself, once she had managed to drag herself free of the morass of self-loathing and misery that had drained her of the willpower to do anything other than merely exist from day to day for months after that dreadful weekend, that henceforward she was not going to waste a single second’s thought on Dominic, or what he might think of her.
That he had made totally incorrect assumptions about her morality she knew very well, but logic—something she had developed within herself with fierce zeal after her meeting with him—had imposed upon her that no matter how much she might differ from the type of woman he had obviously thought her to be, her motives on that particular night were not open to any kind of misinterpretation. She had quite simply wanted him to make love to her so that in doing so she could shed the misery of knowing herself unwanted by Ricky.
Another woman, she knew, might have developed a fierce hatred of Dominic for his rejection of her, but in her, that hatred had been turned in upon herself, burning away what she now chose to think of as her stupidity and weakness in convincing herself that she could find the answer to her own inadequacies in a man’s arms. Now all that was past. She no longer allowed herself to even think of men in any sexual sense. It was safer that way…much, much safer. Never again was she going to allow herself to be as vulnerable to pain and humiliation as she had been with Dominic.
Midway through the afternoon an unanticipated telephone call from Vera disrupted her hard-won calm.
The other woman was telephoning to suggest a time for them to meet to discuss her conservatory. Her voice sounded slightly strained, and Kate guessed intuitively that Vera felt uncomfortable about what had happened at the dinner party. Her initial instinct to cut herself off from the hazard of any potential contact with Dominic, no matter how slightly, was overridden by stubborn pride, as an inner voice taunted her that if she refused to meet Vera now, and Dominic got to hear of it, he would assume that she was afraid. So when Vera suggested that she call round at the house the following day at two-thirty, Kate found herself agreeing.
It was irritating that this should happen now, just when she had felt that life was starting to blossom out a little for her. Would Dominic’s opinion of her affect her chances of getting a commission from the Bensons?
Why should it? she asked herself hardily. Vera would judge her on her ideas and abilities, surely not on her supposed morals or lack of them. Even so it was unpleasant and disconcerting to think that Dominic might have discussed her with them in a derogatory fashion. Her mouth hardened slightly. She was not going to be pushed into a position where she had to defend herself against some supposed crime. If pressed by either Dominic himself or anyone else, she would simply… What? Tell the truth and shame the devil? The aptness of the old saying made her mouth twist in wry self-mockery. What she had done was not really so very dreadful—logic told her that, but logic could not wipe away the agony of Dominic’s harsh condemnation and rejection, and it was that that had left scars that hurt and tormented her even now.
More to keep her mind occupied than anything else, she drove into the small local market town, intent on visiting the library and getting out whatever books she could on Victorian architecture. The conservatory had come to full power during Victorian times and by studying the period in more depth she might come up with some ideas that could be incorporated into a design for Vera’s conservatory.
While she was in town she paid a visit to the office of an estate agent, mindful of the fact that it was time she got the house on the market for sale.
The partner she spoke to was somewhere in his early thirties, his manner pleasant, with what she suspected was supposed to be a flattering edge of flirtatiousness. This she ignored, her smile frostily cool, as she refused to respond. No doubt he used the same manner on all his female clients, and it was rather an insult to her intelligence that he should suppose she could believe that he might be genuine. After all, she knew exactly how little appeal she had for the male sex, didn’t she?
‘I’ll come out and look at the house later in the week, if I may?’ he suggested, when he had finished taking down the details. ‘When would suit you?’
It was left that Kate would ring him later in the week when she knew what her movements would be. In many ways she should not be entirely sorry to sell up and move. The house had far too many unhappy memories for her. Perhaps once she was installed in the cottage… But there could be no going back, she reminded herself as she stepped out into the sunshine. She could not be again the girl she had been at seventeen.
On impulse on the way back home she made a detour so that she could stop at the cottage. It had a deserted, faintly forlorn air, the garden untidily overgrown. Since she had not brought the keys she could not go inside, but she was pleased to see that the sturdily built stone cottage had all its roof slates in place and that the gutters and drainpipes were all in good condition.
She had been happy here in this snug, protective house, and she would be happy here again, she told herself stoutly, blinking away the lump of emotion rising in her throat. Her marriage to Ricky had come so quickly after her father’s death that she had never felt she had truly been given time to mourn her parent. In fact now, as an adult, she could see that she had gone into her marriage in a compl
ete state of shock, but she was not going to start blaming others for what had happened in the past; she had believed herself in love with Ricky. She and her mother had never been close, and she suspected that even if the latter had offered her a home in America with her, she would not have been happy there.
The clouds which had merely been a faint shadow on the horizon when she set out suddenly obliterated the sun. Shivering in the thinness of her T-shirt and skirt, Kate looked up at them and saw that they held the threat of rain. It was time she was going anyway.
She reached home just as the first large raindrops hit her windscreen, and climbed out of the car, making a quick dash for the door, her library books clutched under her arm.
Now that she had made the decision to put the house on the market she looked at it with new eyes. The hall was large and welcoming, the galleried landing drawing the eye. It was the sort of house that would appeal most to people like the Bensons; newcomers to the area with enough money to buy and maintain such an expensive property.
Up until quite recently, Kate had done all the housework herself, and she still did the majority of it, although now she employed someone to come out from the village twice a week, to help out.
She made herself a cup of coffee and took it into the library with her. Here was where she worked. She found the comfortable, masculine ambience of the book-filled room relaxing. She kept her portfolio of designs in a drawer of the large partner’s desk set across one corner of the room, and as she reached for it, she switched on the desk lamp.
The rain clouds covered the sky now, and the small lead-paned windows let in precious little light at the best of times.
As she sat down and started to look through her portfolio a mental image of Dominic’s face intruded between her concentration and the delicate drawings on the white sheets. It irritated her that he should have this power to come between her and her work. She should have been feeling elated and excited at the prospect of a new commission, but all she could feel was an overwrought tension that made her too jumpy and nervous to concentrate on anything.