'You are… what?' she asked incredulously, convinced that she could not have heard correctly.
'I'm going to make my peace with him,' Vince repeated with an unusual display of tolerance. 'I'm going to put him back into circulation by offering him a job as a sub-contractor with the erection of the new steel plant, and whether he accepts it or not will be up to him.'
Cara was mentally winded by this disclosure, but she remained sceptical. 'Did my mother explain to you about the discovery my father made some time after your father's death, and how my father tried to contact you without success?'
'Yes, she explained,' he said, turning to face her, and she wondered what lay hidden behind his shuttered eyes.
'The truth doesn't exactly exonerate my father, so I can't understand why you have decided to be so generous about it,' she remarked with a mixture of cynicism and suspicion in her voice.
'The truth may not exonerate him, Cara, but it makes a hell of a difference knowing he didn't deliberately ruin my father,' Vince explained, losing interest in his cigarette and crushing it into the ashtray.
Cara stared at him. She felt bewildered and not quite sure whether she ought to believe him, but she knew him well enough to know he seldom said anything he did not mean.
'Well, I'm glad you feel that way about it,' she said lamely, 'and I would like to thank you for the offer you are going to make my father, but that doesn't alter my decision to leave you.'
She turned away from him and walked towards the cupboard, but Vince moved with the swiftness of a jungle cat, and placed himself between her and the shelves. 'I'm afraid I'm not going to let you go, Cara.'
His mouth was drawn into a tight, angry line, but Cara was still fired with a deep-seated anger of her own. 'It's over, Vince, and I have no desire to continue with this senseless marriage.'
'The present situation does not alter our agreement.'
'Why not?' she demanded sarcastically. 'Does your generosity towards my father depend on whether you get your money's worth out of me?'
He went white about the mouth. 'Dammit, Cara, it isn't like that at all!'
'Isn't it?' Her tawny eyes were emitting sparks of fury. 'Why should I believe anything other than that?'
He raised his hand and she thought for a moment he was going to strike her, but instead he rubbed the back of his neck in an odd gesture of defeat. 'You're absolutely right, of course, when you say that our marriage has become rather pointless, and I realise now that it was barbaric of me to have forced you into it in the first place. I imagine the only decent thing I can do now is to tell you you're free to go, if that's what you want.'
That was what she had wanted. Vince had actually opened the proverbial door to the cage and he was setting her free, but his action filled her with grave misgivings. Incredible as it may seem, she was no longer so certain that she wanted to leave him. She thought of her father lying ill in hospital, and she suddenly found that she could not conjure up the slightest shred of anger against Vince, but it was too late now to change her mind. He was setting her free, and she knew that, whether it happened now or ten months later, the wrench was going to be agonisingly painful.
She murmured something appropriate, and turned from him to hide the tears shimmering in her eyes as she reached blindly for a neat pile of blouses in the cupboard shelf.
She wished that he would go and leave her in peace, but he stood with his hands thrust into his pockets and his shoulders hunched while his eyes followed her broodingly as she moved back and forth between the cupboard and the open suitcase on the bed. His presence disturbed her intensely, and the prolonged silence unnerved her until she wanted to scream in the hope of relieving the awful tension.
'Where will you be staying?'
Cara's nerves jarred violently at the sound of his voice, and it took a moment to control the tremors racing through her before she could trust her voice. 'I'll stay with my mother until my father is out of hospital and on the mend, and then I want to concentrate on finding myself a job elsewhere.'
'You want to leave Murrayville?' he asked incredulously, his eyebrows meeting in a frown.
'I think that, under the circumstances, it would be the best thing to do, don't you?' she replied without looking at him, but he did not answer her, and he lapsed into yet another tense, lengthy silence that stretched her nerves to breaking point.
She could not get very much more into that one suitcase other than perhaps a sweater or two, and she was taking them out of the shelf when Vince's deep-throated voice disrupted the silence in the room.
'I have a few acquaintances in the literary world if you would like me to—'
'Thanks,' she interrupted him distastefully, 'but I would prefer to do things on my own, and preferably without assistance from you.'
'My flat is at your disposal if you're thinking of going to Johannesburg.'
'I wasn't necessarily thinking of going to Johannesburg,' she shied away from his offer. 'It will depend where I can get a suitable post, or where I might be needed.'
'You're needed here.'
That was an odd thing for Vince to say, but she shrugged it off, and packed her sweaters into the suitcase. 'My parents will need me for a while, I agree, but when my father—'
'No!' Vince barked savagely, and she narrowly missed having her fingers caught in the lid of the suitcase when he slammed it down. 'I need you!'
How cruel he was to ignite a spark of hope where she knew there was none, and the pain of it pierced her like a heated blade. 'You don't need anyone, Vince.'
'Cara…' He was interrupted by a knock on the bedroom door, and there was a flicker of annoyance in his eyes before he swung away from Cara. 'Come in!' he rapped out the authoritative command.
The door opened and Harriet's apologetic glance went from Cara to Vince. 'Mrs Lloyd has telephoned from the hospital to say that her husband is conscious and refuses to be sedated until he has seen you, Vince.'
He nodded curtly. 'I'll be on my way as soon as I've had a brief word with Cara.'
Harriet turned away in silence, closing the door behind her, and Cara was tempted to call her back, but that would have been silly. She was not afraid to be alone with Vince, was she?
'Please, Cara.' His hand gripped her shoulder with a certain urgency. 'I must make use of this opportunity while your father is conscious to speak with him, and I would appreciate it if you would wait here for me until I return.'
This was an earnest plea, not an arrogant command, and the strangeness of it dispersed any desire she might have had to refuse. 'I'll wait,' she promised and, with a brief inclination of his head, Vince strode out of the room.
Cara stared at the door with the odd sensation that she had been left to dangle over the edge of a cliff. She had been relieved to hear that her father was conscious and coherent enough to ask to speak to Vince, but her mind veered back to the conversation she had had with Vince before Harriet had interrupted them.
'I need you,' he had said. Could he have meant it, or had he simply made use of differing tactics as a form of persuasion? Could he be that cruel? The obvious answer was in the affirmative, and Cara wrapped her arms about herself in an unconscious attempt to ease the pain that tore through her.
The afternoon had fled and the darkening sky heralded the commencement of another long winter's night. Cara sighed wearily and put her weight on the lid of the suitcase to fasten the catches. She would wait, but she knew that it would drive her crazy if she remained in that room a moment longer and, touching up her make-up hastily, she went downstairs.
Harriet was sitting in front of the fire in the living-room with a glass of sherry in her hand, and Cara poured a sherry for herself before she joined her there. Harriet staved off the silence by questioning Cara about her father, and Cara questioned her in turn for her medical opinion. It passed the time, and it also eased Cara's fears to know that there was no danger as long as her father rested up completely for a specified time.
Vince's car cru
nched up the drive shortly after six-thirty, and Harriet excused herself at once. 'I think Vince would prefer it if I left you alone to talk,' she explained when Cara tried to detain her.
The log fire crackled and Cara stood bathed in its glow, her hands fluttering nervously as she unnecessarily smoothed down her skirt. Why was she nervous? What was she afraid of? Vince walked into the living-room before she could find an appropriate answer to her frantic queries, and she could almost believe there was a look of relief in his eyes when they met hers across the room.
'Did you speak to my father?' she questioned him nervously when he closed the door.
'I did.'
'And?' she prompted, holding her breath.
'He has been kind enough to forgive me, and he has accepted my offer.' Their eyes met and held as he approached her, and his face looked grim. 'Won't you reconsider, Cara, and stay?'
'No!' She turned from him to hide the pain in her eyes. 'You agreed to let me go, and you can't change your mind now.'
'Cara…' He swung her round to face him, and her glance sharpened when she felt a tremor in the hands gripping her shoulders. She saw that familiar mask crumbling, and his eyes were burning down into hers with a message in their depths which she was too afraid to grasp. A weakness invaded her limbs, and she felt herself swaying. 'My God, I can't let you go!' he groaned harshly, burying his face against her throat as he crushed her against his broad chest.
The bruising pressure of his arms was an ecstasy which she would have wanted to endure for life, but the agony of it finally forced her to stir against him in an attempt to ease the pressure on her ribs.
'Please, you—you're hurting me,' she gasped, and he released her at once.
'I'm sorry,' he grunted apologetically, but his feverish eyes were still probing hers. 'I imagine you must hate me very much.'
Dear heaven! How could he talk of hate when that aching longing inside her was intensified with every beat of her heart? 'I don't hate you, Vince.'
Instead of appeasing him, her reply seemed to anger him, and he turned away from her abruptly. 'I would prefer your hatred to your indifference,' he said harshly over his shoulder.
'Indifference?' she echoed stupidly and somewhat startled.
'Yes, indifference!' he thundered, turning to pin her down with his stabbing gaze. 'You know,' he gestured with uncharacteristic wildness, 'it's that neutral state where you neither care one way or the other.'
Cara found herself staring at him as if she had never seen him before. His ruggedly handsome face looked tortured as if he was suffering the agonies of hell, and his feverish eyes pierced hers with a searching intensity that made her suspect he wanted to see deep down into the most secret corners of her soul. Why? Did he want the truth to mock and humiliate her?
'There have been many times when I have… hated you, but I have never felt… indifferent towards you,' she croaked hesitantly and with a great deal of wariness.
'What have you felt then?' he demanded and, when she had difficulty in finding an evasive answer, he took her by the shoulders and shook her almost savagely. 'For God's sake, Cara, I must know!'
'I—I can't tell you,' she stumbled over the words, and she was shaking so much that she was actually grateful for the agonising support of his large hands on her shoulders.
'Why can't you tell me?' he persisted hoarsely, his eyes never leaving her face.
'Because I—I'm afraid,' she whispered, swallowing convulsively, and lowering her gaze to the pearly buttons on his blue shirt.
'Afraid?' he asked incredulously, then he laughed softly and somewhat exultantly as if something in her manner had told him her secret. 'What are you afraid of?' he asked, drawing her into his arms, and she sought refuge from his probing eyes by burying her flushed face against the smoothness of his suede jacket.
'I'm afraid you will laugh at me for being foolish enough to do the very thing you once warned me against,' the confession was torn from her in a smothered voice.
His arms tightened about her, drawing her more firmly against his hard, muscled body, and Cara found herself drifting somewhere between the heaven of his nearness, and the hell of lingering uncertainty. She felt his lips against her hair, her temple, and then they dipped lower to caress that very sensitive little spot behind her ear. An achingly sweet shiver of pleasure raced through her, and her arms circled his waist beneath his jacket as she pressed herself closer to him.
'Look at me, Cara,' he ordered softly, prizing her face out into the open with gentle fingers, and what she saw in his eyes made the blood pound with a joyous leap through her veins. 'Liebchen … I love you,' he murmured the words she had never imagined she would hear from his lips, and her happiness was so intense that her eyes filled with tears.
'I—I can't believe it,' she stammered helplessly.
'From the first moment I saw you I knew that I wanted you,' Vince continued, 'and for almost a year I accepted every damn invitation to some of the most ridiculous functions in the hope of seeing you there. I am not normally a patient man, Cara, but my desire for revenge was like a cancer in my soul that made me wait and, when the opportunity came to tie you to me, I used the foulest method of all to persuade you. I told myself that I would soon grow tired of you, but that day at the cottage—when we made love in front of the fire—I knew then that I loved you. I fought against it like the very devil; I decided never to touch you again, but every time we were together I found myself aching to hold you.' That haunted look was back in his eyes, and he crushed her against him with a fierceness which almost drove the breath from her body. 'Oh, my God, Cara, I can't let you go out of my life,' he groaned into her fragrant hair. 'I'm bitterly ashamed of what I did, and I want to make it up to you if you will let me.'
She tried to speak, but her throat was tight with tears of happiness. She swallowed and tried again, but she finally had to relinquish the effort in favour of a more primitive method of communication. She raised her eager lips to his and his tender kiss erupted swiftly into a passion which was not intended. Their bodies strained close, their lips and hands clinging, and they were both shaken and breathless when at last they drew apart.
'Tell me you will stay,' he ordered thickly, pulling the comb from her hair and running his fingers through the silken mass when it cascaded down to her shoulders.
'I'll stay, if that's what you want,' she murmured tremulously, finding pleasure in his touch.
'There has to be another reason for you to stay,' Vince insisted, sliding his hands down her back and up again beneath her soft woollen sweater to caress the soft skin at her waist.
'If I said that I—I loved you, would that be sufficient reason?' she asked, finding it difficult to think straight while her body responded deliriously to the feather-light caress of his fingers.
'Would you look at me and say that again?' He drew away from her a little when he said that, and her arms went up of their own volition to circle his strong neck.
'I love you,' she murmured, her tawny eyes glowing, and her lips aching for his, and somehow they were sharing one of the big easy chairs in front of the fire.
Vince murmured words of love in between passionate little kisses, his voice vibrant with an emotion she had never heard before, and it was a soothing balm for all the pain and anguish she had been forced to endure. Everything else faded temporarily into the background, but reality always intervened when it was least welcome.
Cara stirred against him and, when his arms slackened about her, she eased herself away from him. 'Tell me about Chantal?'
It was a sobering question, and one which she could not leave for later if she wanted total peace of mind, and Vince seemed to sense the urgency behind her query.
'I'm not going to deny that Chantal and I had a close relationship before I met you,' he confessed with an honesty she found almost touching. 'The purpose of her visit was to tell me that she had met someone whom she wanted to marry, and I was so happy for her that I confessed to her my feelings for you.'
'Knowing how you felt about me didn't stop her from behaving possessively towards you,' Cara pointed out, her jealousy returning with a vengeance.
'I had enlisted her aid to make you jealous in the hope of discovering whether you cared for me,' he explained, his fingers caressing her warm cheek. 'Were you jealous?'
'Murderously jealous,' she confessed, curling her fingers about his wrist and pressing her lips against his rough palm.
'That's good,' he ground out the words. 'I was jealous of John Curtis, and I felt like killing him that day when I walked into the library and found him there with you.'
Cara's eyes widened in astonishment. 'You had no reason to be jealous of him.'
'I knew how he felt about you, and that was enough,' he said in a clipped voice, getting to his feet and lifting her up with him. Cara felt bereft without his arms about her, and her eyes followed him curiously as he walked towards the fireplace to lean with his hands against the mantelshelf. He was frowning fiercely into the fire, and she was beginning to feel inordinately perturbed when he turned abruptly to face her. 'Can you ever forgive me for what I did to your father and to you?'
A tender smile curved her mouth as she joined him in front of the fireplace and, savouring the joyous freedom of seeking out his nearness, she slid her arms about his neck and leaned her body against his with a newfound confidence.
'Knowing and understanding makes it easy to forgive, Vince.' She raised her face to his and her expression sobered fractionally. 'Are you serious about helping my father?'
The Devil's Pawn Page 16