by Penny Jordan
She heard footsteps on the gravel and pushed herself away from him.
'Liz, my dear, are you all right?'
Ian was kneeling on the path beside her, Lewis answering for her as he said bitingly, 'Of course she's not damned well all right. That… that… that idiot damn near killed her.'
'I'm fine, Ian,' Liz told him, smiling shakily at him.
'She's not fine at all,' Lewis contradicted flatly. 'Look at her, man, look at what he's done to her. Another minute—'
'It was an accident,' Liz protested. 'Edward didn't mean…' She looked appealingly at Ian but he was shaking his head.
'I'm sorry, my dear. I know you only want to protect him, but for his own good I'm afraid we must get him into hospital. These moods of his…' He shook his head. 'If Mr McLaren hadn't arrived so fortuitously—'
'He'd have killed her,' Lewis supplied for him.
'No… that's not true,' Liz protested.
'I'm sorry, Liz, but you must see we can't allow you to take any more risks. I know how Edward feels about taking stronger drugs, but I'm afraid I'm now going to have to insist that he at least undergoes trials to see if they could help him, and the best place for that is in the controlled atmosphere of a hospital. Don't worry about him. You'll be able to visit him as often as you wish.'
'He'll be so afraid,' Liz protested.
'He's a grown man, my dear,' Ian told her quietly, 'not a child, and think… At the moment his anger, his bitterness is focused on you, but what if it happened that he started to focus it on someone else? Chivers, or David—or even a stranger? You might have the right to take risks with your own life, but if Edward should injure someone else—kill them, even—how would you then feel?'
He hated having to be so cruel to her, but it was necessary, and he could see that the words had hit home from the whiteness of her face.
'You shouldn't be with me,' Liz told him shakily. 'You should be with Edward, he needs you more.'
'Chivers has very wisely given Edward a couple of strong sleeping tablets. Now, let's get you upstairs where I can examine you properly. If Mr McLaren could carry you…?'
'No.' The sharpness of the way she said it made Ian frown and hesitate. 'No, it's all right. I can walk,' Liz told them both.
She could, but only just, and she had to lean on Lewis more than once on her way upstairs to her room.
Once she was there, Ian tactfully but firmly banished Lewis while he examined her.
Afterwards he sat down on her bed and told her quietly, 'You are very, very lucky to be alive. And Edward is very, very lucky that it's only hospital he's going to right now and not prison.'
'Lucky… I don't feel it, not with my throat so sore that I can hardly speak,' Liz told him ruefully, trying to make light of what had happened.
'Yes, it will be sore,' Ian agreed. 'Liz, you do understand, don't you, that it is imperative now that we get Edward into hospital? As his doctor I have to insist, in fact, that we make immediate arrangements. If I could use your telephone…?'
'But what can you do for him there that can't be done at home?' Liz protested.
'Many things. For instance we can monitor his responses to the drug tests much more closely, in much more controlled conditions. It is necessary, Liz, and I'm afraid on this occasion you must accept my judgement on that. You must see that if I don't do something now and at some later stage Edward attacks you again, or someone else, I would virtually be to blame… I don't want your death on my conscience.
'Now, you try to get some rest. I'm going downstairs to ring the hospital and organise a bed for Edward. I'll go with him and see him settled in, and I promise you that just as soon as he wakes up I'll be there to explain to him what's happening.'
He saw that she was trying to speak and shook his head.
'No. You must rest that throat of yours, and anyway I know what you're going to say. You want to be there. Well, for once Edward is going to have to do without you, and I promise you when you wake up tomorrow morning that throat of yours is going to be so stiff and sore that you'll be glad I'm insisting on your staying in bed. In fact, if necessary, I'll tell Chivers he has to lock you in here and remove the key,' he warned her, smiling at her as he got up and walked over to the door.
Downstairs he found Lewis pacing the library floor waiting for him. 'What's happening? How is she?' he burst out as Ian walked in.
'Her throat is very badly bruised and she's shocked, of course, but there doesn't seem to be any permanent damage.'
'No permanent damage…' He wheeled and stared blindly out of the window, his voice shaking as he demanded, 'Do you know what he was trying to do to her? He was trying to kill her.'
'Yes. Yes, I do know,' Ian agreed quietly.
There was another silence and still Lewis couldn't bring himself to turn round and look at the other man in case he read his feelings in his eyes; for Liz's sake he couldn't allow those feelings to be seen, no matter how much he might want to stand on the highest hill he could find and shout his love for her to the world.
'Then why in God's name does she stay with him? Why?'
He couldn't keep the words back nor the pain out of his voice. Ian watched him for a moment and asked him quietly, 'How much do you know about them… about Liz herself and her relationship with Edward?'
He could see Lewis's back stiffening.
'In many ways I agree with you, but I know Liz. She'll never leave him.'
'But why? Why?'
'Because he needs her,' Ian told him gently.
'Does he? It didn't look like it when I saw him today— he was trying to kill her.'
'Yes, I know. Look, come and sit down and I'll try to explain.'
Unwillingly Lewis did as he asked. He still hadn't got over the shock of discovering Edward with his hands wrapped round Liz's throat, his eyes bulging with maniacal hatred as he tried to squeeze the life out of her.
'Edward loves Liz. He's also paranoically jealous of her—and of any man she comes into contact with,' he added warningly. 'He's obsessed with the fear that he's going to lose her, a fear that's exacerbated by the frustration of the desire he feels for her but can never physically express. He is mortally afraid of losing her to another man, a man who could be a husband and a lover to her in all the ways that he cannot.'
Slowly Lewis stared at Ian, the colour receding from his skin as he said, 'But they have a child—a son…'
The pain in his voice made Ian wince. Perhaps he had said too much, but it was too late for him to stop now. 'Liz has a son,' he corrected him. 'I shouldn't be telling you any of this and I don't know really why I am, except that I happen to think a great deal of Liz and I just wish…' He stopped and sighed. Quite what he wished for Liz he wasn't sure. That she could find fulfilment as a woman; that she could be relieved of believing that the burden of a lack of sexual responsiveness to Kit Danvers was hers when he was pretty sure it belonged on Kit's own shoulders… So what was he trying to do? Push Liz into the arms of this man who so plainly wanted her?
'It isn't my place to tell you any more,' he said slowly. 'I'm going to ring the hospital now and arrange for an ambulance to come and collect Edward. I want him to go into hospital for a few days so that we can run some tests on him with a new drug that I'm hoping we'll be able to use to control these violent depressions he's been getting. It isn't easy for him either, you know,' he told Lewis. 'He loves her.'
'He would have killed her,' Lewis told him tiredly, repeating, as though he could hardly believe it himself, 'He would have killed her.'
'But fortunately he didn't,' Ian returned. 'I've given Chivers instructions to make a cup of tea into which he's going to slip a sleeping powder. If I know Liz she'll refuse to take anything I prescribe, but she needs to sleep, to give her body time to heal.'
While Ian was making arrangements for the ambulance to come and collect Edward, Lewis walked out into the garden, his footsteps automatically taking him to the beginning of the walk between the double borders. At the
top of it he stopped and stared down it, his throat going dry with tension and fear as he remembered how he had stood there and seen Liz—his Liz—and that fiend of a husband of hers with his hands round her throat…
He started to shake; to feel sick with rage and love. The stones on the path were scattered unevenly where she had fallen. If he had only been seconds later… Was this fate's way of punishing him? First his wife and his child, now Liz… What had he ever done to warrant such pain? He had married Elaine in good faith, believing it was what she wanted, believing they would be happy together. He had intended to make her a good and faithful husband, a good father to their children even if he had not loved her, at least not as a woman… Had there been signs he had missed, warnings he should have picked up but which he had been too busy running the station to notice? Had she made silent cries for help which he had ignored? How many times had he asked himself these questions? How many times during the dark, lonely hours of the night had he longed to turn back time, to save her and their child?
When he had come to England there had been no purpose to his life, only a vast, wasting emptiness. And then he had met Liz and everything had changed.
'I can't,' she had told him. 'I can't leave Edward.' But surely now…?
From the garden he paused and looked back at the house, picturing her lying in her bed. She had felt so light when he had caught her to him, so small and fragile.
He turned back towards the house and started to walk and then to run. He met Ian Holmes just as the latter stepped out of the french windows.
The ambulance will be here shortly. Chivers informs me that Liz is asleep. You're staying in the village, I believe…'
'I was,' Lewis told him, adding, 'Until Liz is fully recovered I shall be staying here…'
'Yes…'
They looked at one another for a long time and it was Ian who looked away first.
A vehicle was approaching the house. When he saw it was the ambulance, Ian excused himself, leaving Lewis to watch him walking away.
CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR
Liz woke up abruptly, conscious with the odd clarity that came in the heartbeat of space between sleeping and waking that something was wrong, that the light coming in through her closed curtains was not the light of early morning—and then she saw the motionless figure seated in the chair.
'Edward.'
As she said his name she was aware of a feeling of coldness and fear, a sense of despair and panic.
'It isn't Edward, Liz, it's me, Lewis.'
The relief, the joy—the immediate reversal of all her earlier emotions as Lewis's voice transmuted them from the darkness of fear and pain into the shining gold of exaltation and delight—made her shiver with the knowledge of how dangerous her emotions were, how impermissible and wrong.
'Edward's in hospital,' Lewis told her, getting up and coming over to the bed, quickly adding, 'It's all right. There's nothing wrong with him. But your doctor… He seemed to think that it was the best place for him right' now. Personally,' Lewis told her grimly, 'I should have thought prison…'
He saw the small anguished movement of her body beneath the sheets and stopped before telling her emotionally, 'My God, Liz, he could have killed you, would have—'
'No,' she denied immediately. 'No. He didn't mean—'
'Didn't he?' Lewis interrupted her. 'When I arrived…' He stopped and then demanded passionately, 'Why do you stay married to him, Liz? He's no husband for you… Why did you marry him in the first place? And don't tell me you love him. I saw your face just now when you woke up and thought I was him.'
Liz winced, her face going paler.
Her throat was almost too sore for her to speak. It felt swollen and raw inside. She felt weaker than she had ever felt in her life. She could feel the tears burning at the back of her eyes and knew that there was nothing she wanted more than to reach out to this man who watched her with such angry, hungry eyes and to tell him how much she loved him, to beg him to take hold of her and to go on holding her, to keep her safe not just from Edward, but from all her own fears as well.
But if she did that… She shuddered, knowing the burden of guilt they would both have to carry if she allowed herself to give way to her vulnerability.
He was right to criticise her… to condemn her. It was her fault that Edward had attacked her. It was her fault because she had never realised, never known until it was too late how much Edward loved her, and how dangerous that love would become without any natural outlet, how it would turn in upon itself and slowly poison their whole relationship.
'I'm sorry,' she heard Lewis apologise huskily. 'I had no right… I'm behaving as badly as Edward—worse…'
'No,' Liz contradicted him tiredly, 'I shouldn't have married him, but you see…'
Suddenly she wanted to talk to him, to unburden herself to him, to explain to him why she had acted as she had.
She told him as quickly and as briefly as she could, skimming over the emotional poverty of her life with her aunt, and the deliberate cruelty with which Kit had treated her.
'It's too easy to make excuses for myself now, but if I had known how Edward really felt—'
'How could you have known?' Lewis interrupted her tenderly. 'You were just a child.'
Liz gave him a wry smile. 'Hardly… I was seventeen, more than old enough to—'
'As I said, you were just a child,' Lewis told her grimly. He was fighting to control his anger… against Edward and against his cousin.
'And this Kit, David's father… You still love him, still want him.'
Like lovers throughout eternity, he couldn't quite keep the jealousy out of his voice, but the tiny shudder that went through her still body, the look in her eyes, at once so haunted and so anguished, immediately reassured him.
'No,' Liz told him honestly. 'Nor have I wanted anyone else since. I've been content in my marriage to Edward…'
Liar, an inner voice taunted her. You might have been content once but you aren't now.
She shivered beneath the bedclothes. It was true. She wasn't content any longer, hadn't been since…
'Content.' Lewis looked grimly at her. 'Are you, Liz? Are you really content to live with a man who might quite easily murder you, a man…?'
She didn't want to be reminded of Edward's attack on her. She moved jerkily, covering her face with her hands while her body trembled violently as it remembered the frightening sense of helplessness and fear which had overwhelmed her when she realised she couldn't break free of Edward's hold.
'Oh, God, Liz, my darling… Don't, please! Don't.'
She hadn't seen him move, hadn't been aware of anything other than the shock of her remembered fear, until she felt the bed depress beneath Lewis's weight and looked up to find he was reaching down to her, taking her into his arms, holding her, cradling her, whispering to her all the soft sweet words of love for which her lonely heart had so dangerously yearned.
While he kissed her face and stroked her hair, she told herself frantically that she must stop him, that she must not allow this to go any further, but there was so much sweetness, so much warmth, so much love in the way he held and touched her that her starved senses refused to listen to the warning urgings of her brain.
Instead of telling him that he must leave, that to stay here with her now was to promote a situation which could only ultimately increase her pain, she found herself telling him more about her marriage, about her unhappiness in her brief affair with Kit, about her son, and even, self-betrayingly, and oh, so hesitantly, she actually found she was confiding to him her awareness of her own lack of any strong sense of sexuality.
'If you're telling me that because you think it will put me off, you're wasting your time,' Lewis told her gravely. 'It's you I want, my darling. You…'
As he spoke he smoothed the hair back off her face and looked down into her eyes. 'Leave him, Liz,' he begged her huskily. 'Leave him now and let me take care of you…'
Just for one wild, crazy moment
she wavered, telling herself that she had the right surely to snatch at this precious, undreamed-of happiness…that she and Lewis loved one another and that their love must be allowed to live and grow… that whatever she had to sacrifice to be with him must be worthwhile… and then sanity took over and she realised how impossible it was for her to do what she was contemplating.
'I can't,' she told him. 'Please try to understand—'
'I understand that I love you,' Lewis interrupted her savagely. 'And that you love me… Don't try to deny it. I've seen it in your eyes, felt it in the way your heart beats when I touch you. We were meant to be together, Liz. To try to prevent that from happening would be the sin, staying with Edward when you don't love him—those would be sins… not leaving him to come to me…'
She closed her eyes, her heart and her body both filled with unbearable pain.
She wanted to give in, to say yes, to throw everything else aside and simply go with him. Perhaps if she had still been a girl of seventeen she might have been able to do so, but she wasn't that girl any more. She was a woman; a woman, moreover, who was a whole decade older…and wiser.
As she looked at him, she felt the pain inside her grow, and knew with certainty that she would love him for the rest of her life. She touched his downbent head gently, blinking back her tears as she asked herself why fate had been cruel enough to send him into her life when it knew that there was no place for him there.
'I can't leave Edward,' she told him.
He looked up, about to argue with her, about to remind her that Edward, her precious husband, had almost killed her, and as he looked at her throat and saw the bruises darkening the skin, and then into her eyes where he could see her anguish and despair, he cursed himself for his selfishness, and said quietly, 'Right now what you need more than anything else is to rest. Your doctor has left a sleeping drug…'
Immediately she shook her head.
'Right now all I really want is a cup of warm milk,' she told him huskily. She knew she should ask him to leave… tell him to leave if necessary. After all, there was no real need for him to stay. She had Chivers and by tomorrow she would be back to her normal self, fully able to get up and take control of her life again. She would have things to do, as well. She would have to get in touch with Ian, and arrange to go and see Edward…