‘Perfectly clear,’ retorted Emma. ‘But aren’t you being rather hypocritical?’
Richard frowned.
‘Hypocritical? In what way?’
Emma twisted out of his grip and flounced across the room. Even now the thought of Richard and Amanda together filled her with such turmoil that it was several seconds before she could speak. She stood fighting for breath until some semblance of calm returned to her. Then she turned around and looked at Richard with cold, accusing eyes.
‘It’s perfectly OK for you and Amanda, is it?’ she challenged. ‘You can go to bed with her, live with her, even tell me you’re going to marry her and that’s all right! I’m supposed to bite my tongue and look the other way, be the good little doormat while you do exactly as you please. Never mind about love, Richard, never mind about fidelity! What about showing a proper respect for me as your wife? Did it ever occur to you that perhaps any red-blooded woman wants her husband exclusively to herself?’
Richard’s rugged features creased into a mocking smile that made Emma long to slap his face.
‘So you’re beginning to get some idea of the pain and humiliation involved, are you, sweetheart?’ he taunted. ‘I’m glad to see it.’
Emma caught her breath.
‘Oh, go to hell!’ she shouted. ‘You’re such a bastard, Richard! You enjoy tormenting me, don’t you?’
‘Perhaps,’ he agreed with that same cool, indifferent smile.
She took a long, shuddering breath and tried to match his cold, indifferent stare with her own.
‘Are you sleeping with her?’ she demanded bluntly.
Richard shrugged, his blue eyes narrowed in amusement as they rested on her.
‘Maybe I am, maybe I’m not,’ he replied. ‘Try living with suspicion and doubt for a while, Emma. See how you like it.’
‘You don’t care about me one scrap, do you?’
‘No, I don’t,’ replied Richard brutally. ‘And I’m not going to be a caged tiger jumping through hoops for you, Emma. This time if anyone is cracking the whip it’ll be me, so may I remind you that this reunion is not about love? It’s about sex, passion, revenge.’
Emma’s explosive temper blazed up and with an incoherent cry she launched herself at Richard, intending to slap his face.
‘I hate you! I hate you!’ she shouted.
But before she could reach him something strange happened. The ground seemed to lurch up to meet her and the room dissolved into a hectic pattern of grey dots. When at last the dizzy, whirling feeling subsided she became dimly aware that she was sitting on the sofa again with her head between her knees and Richard’s arm around her. She heard his voice, rapid, anxious, full of concern but strangely muffled so that she couldn’t distinguish the words, until at last the ringing in her ears subsided and the floor steadied beneath her feet.
‘Emma?’
‘Mmm?’ She raised her head groggily and blinked at him.
‘Are you feeling better now?’ he repeated.
She nodded uncertainly and his arm tightened pro tectively around her shoulders.
‘I’m sorry if I brought this on,’ he muttered. ‘Upsetting you like that—’
‘It wasn’t that, Richard,’ she protested, shaking her head. ‘I’m sure it wasn’t. I’ve been feeling awful ever since we left Bali.’
‘Stress and overwork,’ he retorted. ‘But it’s stopping right now. Do you hear me? You’re going to a doctor tomorrow and after that you’re taking a long holiday.’
‘Whatever you say,’ muttered Emma feebly.
‘Hell! Now I know you really are sick.’
Without warning he suddenly rose to his feet and in a single swift movement scooped her off the couch and into his arms. Taken by surprise, she glanced up at his face and saw an urgent, hungry look in his eyes. For a moment she thought it was tenderness, then it vanished abruptly. All the same there was a dangerous potent sweetness in being held so tightly against him. She could feel the warmth of his body coming off in waves, hear the deep, slow thudding of his heart, smell the indescribable masculine scent that reminded her somehow of woodsmoke or leather. In spite of her earlier annoyance she gave him a small, uncertain smile and was shocked when he uttered a low groan and crushed her even more tightly against him. She could not deny that there was an aching pleasure in letting him carry her upstairs to bed. By now she was probably well enough to walk, but it gave her an unexpected thrill to feel his powerful arms about her and to sense the muscular strength of his thighs as he loped effortlessly up the stairs. At last he set her down in the centre of the huge bed and sprawled beside her, gently stroking her long black hair away from her face. Her fainting attack had completely changed the atmosphere between them. In place of the brooding antagonism he had shown before, Richard was now gazing at her with a tendemess that disarmed her.
‘Can I get you anything?’ he asked. ‘Something to eat or drink?’
She shook her head.
‘Do you want me to call a doctor?’
Again she shook her head, feeling slightly embarrassed now.
‘No, honestly,’ she protested, hauling herself up against the pillows. ‘I’m fine now. I don’t know what came over me.’
‘I told you. Stress and overwork. You’re going to slow down now, madam. OK?’
Emma gave a soft, rippling laugh.
‘Yes, master,’ she said meekly.
Richard scowled ferociously at her. ‘Are you making fun of me?’ he demanded in a threatening tone.
‘Of course I am.’
His lips twitched. Abstractedly he twined her long hair around his fingers and raised a lock of it to his lips.
‘All the same, it’s no joke,’ he warned. ‘Working so hard, never having any relaxation, never being able to share your problems can just about destroy your life. I know. I’ve been through it.’
His words woke an answering echo in the back of Emma’s mind. She stared thoughtfully at him with her head tilted on one side.
‘Your mother said something like that,’ she remarked pensively. ‘That you were under a lot of pressure and had a lot of burdens when we were first married. What did she mean, Richard?’
Richard released his hold on her hair and drew back, looking suddenly wary and suspicious.
‘Nothing important,’ he muttered.
Emma leaned forward and grabbed his hand.
‘Tell me,’ she insisted. ‘Don’t you think I have a right to know? Especially if that was part of the reason we were always fighting, why we finally split up.’
‘I don’t know why my mother couldn’t keep her mouth shut,’ he said in exasperation. ‘It was no big deal, really. But, yes, I suppose you could say I was under a lot of strain when I married you.’
‘Why?’ asked Emma softly.
‘It’s a pretty complicated story, but the essence of it is this. You know my mother injured her hip in a car accident and that’s why she walks with a limp?’
Emma nodded.
‘Yes, you told me that. And your father was killed in the same accident, wasn’t he? That must have been hard on you, Richard, I can see that. But it happened ten years before you met me, didn’t it? When you were sixteen?’
‘Yes, it did, but I never really told you the whole story before. You see, what none of us ever suspected was that my father was a compulsive gambler. For years he’d been embezzling money from the firm of solicitors where he worked to pay for his gambling habit. Guilt and fear that he’d be discovered also led him into drinking fairly heavily and that was what caused the accident. When he was killed, the senior partner in the firm discovered everything and told my aunt. She was Dad’s sister, but basically she washed her hands of the whole mess. Her solution was that everything my father owned should be sold to help to pay the debts and that the three of us kids should be put in foster homes. Christina was only twelve and John was eight and I knew it would break my mother’s heart if that happened.
For months she was too sick to be told the truth, but I tackled the senior partner in the firm myself and brought my aunt in to join the discussion. We came to an unofficial arrangement and everything was hushed up.’ ‘What kind of unofficial arrangement?’ demanded
‘Well; there were two things that I vowed to do. The first was to keep the family together. That was relatively easy. I bullied my aunt into telling the child welfare people that she would provide a home for the three of us, but in fact she did nothing of the kind. I was the one who did it. I left school, got a job as a brick-layer on a building site, tented a house and did the best I could for John and Christina until my mother was well enough to come home.’
‘How long did that take?’
‘Two years, although even then she needed a private nurse for quite a long time.’
‘Two years!’ echoed Emma. ‘And you said it was relatively easy! What was the second thing you vowed to do?’
‘To repay all the money my father had misappropriated. That was a lot harder. Everything he had left in his will had to be sold and there were still massive debts. By the time I met you, things had improved a lot, but I was still trying to pay off the last of what was owing. Apart from that, I had Christina studying medicine and John in his last year of an expensive private school. It was a difficult time.’
Emma stared at him.
‘Richard, why didn’t you ever tell me?’ she breathed.
His face still wore a shuttered, defensive look.
‘I wanted to protect you,’ he said curtly. ‘I thought it was my job to provide for you, not worry you with debts and commitments. And I should have been tough enough and ugly enough to handle it on my own. What right did I have to marry you otherwise? You’d always been brought up in the lap of luxury. I wanted to shelter you, cherish you, defend you.’
Emma pulled a face.
‘How strange,’ she said with a catch in her voice. ‘I always thought you wanted to scowl at me and shout at me and make violent love to me.’
Richard cast her a smouldering glance, but his lips twitched.
‘That too,’ he admitted.
Impulsively she squeezed his hand.
‘It was silly, Richard,’ she protested. ‘I admire you enormously for what you did, but you should have opened up to me about your problems. I know we wouldn’t have fought so much if you had. And I certainly wouldn’t have been so extravagant or complained so much when you went out and worked overtime. But I wasn’t a mind-reader. How could I possibly know what troubles you were going through? You were so moody and irritable sometimes, I used to think that you were regretting that you’d married me.’
‘Don’t be ridiculous,’ snapped Richard. ‘I was just racking my brains about whether I could ever repay my father’s debts and give you the kind of life I wanted you to have. I never regretted marrying you!’
‘Never?’ asked Emma huskily.
Richard’s face hardened and his eyes held the flickering grey light of a stormy sea.
‘Not until you ran off with good old Nigel,’ he said savagely.
Emma closed her eyes briefly and shuddered. Why, why did he always come back to that? And why was it so different from his squalid little affair with another woman? Did he seriously think infidelity was all right for men but not for women?
For a moment she was tempted to blurt out the real truth—that she had never slept with Nigel, although she had deliberately let Richard believe that she had. Deceiving him had been a way of hitting back, of showing him that she couldn’t care two hoots about his infidelities. Even now she wasn’t prepared to sacrifice that tactical advantage. Tell Richard that she had never made love with anyone but him, when all the time he might be planning to leave her for Amanda? Not likely! All the same, she didn’t want this bitterness to go on festering between them…
‘Don’t go on and on about it,’ she begged, opening her eyes. ‘I can’t stand any of it! It was years ago, Richard. And it wasn’t the only thing that was wrong between us, not by a long shot. Do you have to go on hating me forever? Can’t you just be nice to me?’
Richard’s hand crushed her fingers and he stared at her with an odd, brooding look. But at last he sighed and shook his head.
‘I don’t know,’ he admitted honestly. ‘But I suppose I could try.’
‘Then will you release me from this bargain?’ asked Emma in a rush.
Her pride told her that she must make the demand and make it quickly, while Richard’s defences were down. Yet the mere act of uttering the words gave her such a stab of regret that she wondered belatedly whether it really was what she wanted. Would it make her happy if Richard agreed to let her go? As it happened, she never had the chance to find out, for a familiar look of stony obstinacy came into Richard’s face and he shook his head.
‘No, Emma,’ he said implacably. ‘You’re mine and I won’t let you go until I choose.’
Her heart gave a treacherous skip of relief at these words, followed immediately by a flutter of apprehension. What about when he did choose to release her? Would he still send her off at the end of the three months? Replace her with Amanda? Her eyes went dark with foreboding at the thought. Putting out the back of her hand, she rubbed his cheek.
‘Then can’t you at least be nice to me for the rest of our time together?’ she pleaded. ‘I can’t bear to go on the way we are, with all this anger and hatred between us.’
He caught her fingers in his hand and drew them across to his mouth, nuzzling them so that his warm breath tickled her knuckles.
‘Why do I feel as if I’m being enticed into a scented trap?’ he growled, half to himself. ‘All right, you little siren. I’ll be nice to you. But don’t count on it lasting.’
She put up her other hand so that she was framing his face and could stare straight into his blue eyes. An unexpected rush of affection surged through her. Oh, God, how she loved him in spite of everything! Even now she would welcome him back in a moment if only he would cancel out the past and promise to be faithful to her forever. She gave him a twisted smile.
‘I don’t count on anything these days,’ she said.
For a moment he seemed on the point of saying something, then he appeared to change his mind. Burying his face in her neck, he held her tightly for a moment and then straightened up.
‘I think you ought to try and get some sleep,’ he said. ‘I’ll go into the other room so that I don’t disturb you.’
A dark, soothing oblivion descended on her and she did not stir for hours. When at last she woke to the touch of Richard’s hand on her shoulder, it was early morning. Blinking, she hauled herself up on the pillows and squinted at the sunshine streaming through the window, and then at the hands of the clock on the chest of drawers. Ten past seven! A lazy trail of vapour from the bedside table made her realise that Richard had brought her an early morning cup of tea and she felt strangely touched by this gesture. He was already dressed in a lightweight grey business suit, white shirt and a blue and grey tie and his manner was as pleasant and unruffled as if they had been happily married for the last eight or nine years. Neither of them referred to the previous evening and Emma gave him a puzzled, uncertain smile before reaching for her wrap.
‘I’ll just dash into the bathroom,’ she explained.
When she returned, she was conscious of a feeling of disappointment that he was no longer there, but, climbing back into bed, she took the first reviving sips of tea. It was Earl Grey, weak, black and hot, exactly as she liked it, and she had just settled back into the pillows with a contented sigh, when the door opened and Richard returned. He carried a tray, laden with toast and marmalade, which he set down on her legs before perching on the foot of the bed himself. But before long he was energetically raiding her plate and in the end he ate most of the toast. Emma began to giggle and couldn’t stop.
‘What is it?’ he demanded with a frown.
‘You always used to do that,’ she complained. �
��Bring me breakfast in bed and then eat it yourself!’
He looked guilty and put back the slice of toast he had just purloined, but impulsively Emma reached out and touched his arm.
‘No, don’t stop,’ she urged. ‘I like you doing it.’
Their eyes met. In the old days he would have laid down the toast and taken her in his arms. Even now the impulse was there in the sudden flash of warmth and humour that lit his face. There was no trace of the antagonism that had marred the previous evening and suddenly it reminded Emma of a story she had once heard about the trenches in World War One, when Christmas arrived and the soldiers laid down their arms and exchanged gifts in a brief truce. A smile touched the corners of her mouth.
‘What are you thinking?’ he asked.
She told him.
‘Are we at war?’ he asked sombrely, reaching up one hand to cup her cheek.
An intense confusion swept over her as she gazed at him and she realised that it was an impossible question to answer. Now that she understood the reason for his short temper early in their marriage, she felt a rush of compassion and sympathy for him. Besides, she was touched by his gentleness when she had been sick the previous evening. Yet at the same time she felt aggrieved by his ruthless, arrogant insistence that he had a perfect right to sleep with other women, while she had to remain a model of wifely fidelity. The image of Amanda, glamorous, efficient and unbearably threatening, rose before her and her green eyes flashed.
‘Aren’t we?’ she countered.
He did not reply, but rose to his feet and paced around the room, and when he spoke he changed the subject.
‘Do you want me to make a doctor’s appointment for you?’ he demanded.
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