by Penny Jordan
Was that what Luke had meant when he said he wanted to talk to her? Had he been going to tell her that he was engaged to someone else, to excuse his behaviour with her as mere male sexual desire, to beg her to keep what had happened a secret between them? Her desire to be sick increased. She was shivering, beset by a nausea and self-contempt so intense that it overwhelmed every single one of the other emotions she was feeling, including her need to keep her feelings, her thoughts private from this hard-eyed, vindictive woman.
‘He doesn’t give a damn about you really, you know,’ Lucinda was telling her savagely. ‘He laughs about you, actually. He says he can’t believe how easy it’s been to deceive you. He thought it was going to be far harder, but then, I suppose you just couldn’t believe your luck, could you? And so you weren’t on your guard against it. After all the time you must have spent in the old man’s bed persuading him to leave you this place, I’ll bet you couldn’t believe your luck when Luke walked into your life, and you never even questioned it, did you? Never doubted for a moment what he told you.’
She was laughing now, a cynical hateful laugh that jarred on Melanie’s sensitive ears, making her long to be able to cover them, to hide herself away somewhere where she could no longer hear the acid taunt of the other woman’s voice.
‘Luke was livid when he found out what you’d done, you know. Everyone knew he was the old man’s only relative, that, even though they’d quarrelled and John Burrows had refused to speak to him, Luke believed he would never leave this place to someone outside the family.
‘When Luke found out that you’d inherited it instead of him, he swore he’d get the will overset. He knew, you see, that his Uncle John would never have left this place to you had he been right in the head—‘‘of sound mind’’ the legal people call it, don’t they? Well, no old man of seventy-odd who thinks that a cheap scheming tart actually could ever really want him, no matter how much she lets him use her body, could be right in the head, could he?’ she challenged viciously, while Melanie stared at her, her body frozen with shock, her mind turning instinctively away from the venomous things she was being told.
‘You never even guessed, did you?’ Lucinda was crowing triumphantly. ‘It never occurred to you that Luke was lying to you…that he was here for one purpose and one purpose only, and that was to unmask you, to prove in court that the old man was out of his mind when he made that will.
‘You can refuse to sell this place to my father as often as you like. In the end he’ll get it, because in the end Luke will be able to establish the truth and get the old man’s will overset, and then he’ll sell out to Dad.
‘Dad’s promised us a brand new house in its own secluded piece of land on the other side of the village. He’s giving it to us as a wedding present,’ she added smugly.
‘My God, when Luke told me how he’d come here and got you to swallow that story about him being a private detective and not having a telephone…! You really fell for it, didn’t you? Well, I hope for your sake you haven’t fallen for Luke as well, because he’s mine, and all he wanted you for was to prove just what kind of woman you are…the kind who’d sleep with anyone—even an old man like John Burrows—if she thought there was anything in it for her. I knew the type you were when I saw you kissing that guy outside here the other day. Of course I told Luke immediately. Pity I didn’t think to take a photograph…but then I expect by now Luke’s got all the evidence he needs to prove in court the kind of pressure you put on the old man to get him to change his will.’
Melanie couldn’t bear to listen to any more. If she didn’t get rid of her tormentor right now she was going to be physically sick at her feet. Her brain was a sickening kaleidoscope of taunts and threats, her body reeling as though from a thousand physical blows.
Luke had lied to her. Luke had deceived her. Luke had made love to her purely and simply… She gagged on the acid burn of nausea clogging her throat and managed to demand thickly, ‘Get out of here! Just get out…before I call the police and have you thrown out.’
‘You call the police?’ Lucinda taunted, but her voice had suddenly become nervously shrill and Melanie was pleased to see that she had released her arm and that she was starting to back away from her.
No doubt she did present a frightening picture if her face had gone as pale as it felt, if the emotions she could feel churning inside her body were even vaguely reflected in her eyes.
‘Don’t worry, I don’t intend to stay,’ Lucinda told her sneeringly. ‘Luke will be here soon enough himself.’
‘Luke!’ Melanie gasped. She had forgotten all about Luke’s return in the shock of Lucinda’s arrival and what she had had to say. ‘Just get out,’ she repeated sickly.
To her relief Lucinda appeared to be doing just that. She opened the door and turned to Melanie, a cruel smile of triumph glittering in her eyes.
‘Oh, yes, it’s given Luke and me a few good laughs when he’s told me how easily he deceived you.’
As she walked away from her, Melanie bit down hard on her lip to suppress her own choked response. It was no use telling herself that she should feel sorry for the other woman; that there was no way she could ever accept, never mind rejoice in the fact that a man she loved had so cruelly and callously deceived another human being, and there was certainly no way she could ever accept the fact that the man she loved had physically been intimate with another woman, no matter what the cause or the excuse. If she had known…if she had suspected for one moment that Luke was committed elsewhere…
She closed the door after her unwanted visitor, but before she could lock it she had to rush upstairs to the bathroom where she was violently sick.
After it was over and her heaving stomach had quietened a little, she washed her face and cleaned her teeth. She felt dizzy, her cut leg was throbbing painfully and she was starting to shiver again, not this time with cold but with shock.
How could Luke have done that to her? How could any man, no matter what the provocation? If he felt so strongly about his second cousin’s will why couldn’t he simply have told her…asked her? She would soon have been able to tell him the truth that she had no more idea than he had as to why she should have been chosen to inherit. And as for Lucinda Hewitson’s vile accusations—no, she corrected herself shakily, Luke’s vile accusations about her supposed relationship with John Burrows…
She shuddered nauseously again. How could he have imagined…how could he have believed…how could he have brought himself to talk to her, never mind touch her…never mind make love to her in the way that he had, believing that she…?
As she relived every one of Lucinda’s cruel taunts she asked herself despairingly if Luke really thought his own behaviour was any better than that which he had attributed to her, if he really thought his motives were any purer, any less sickeningly vile, or if he truly believed that each and every lie he had uttered could honestly be vindicated. Wasn’t he just as motivated by greed as he had so wrongly assumed her to be? Wasn’t he even worse in his way than the woman he thought her to be? John Burrows had been his second cousin, and yet, even though they had quarrelled and he had obviously neglected the old man, he had still arrogantly expected to be his heir.
Melanie thought of all the long bitter years during which her benefactor had obviously been alone…of the way he had clung to this family home, even while he had stubbornly refused to make things up with his only remaining family; and, as the hot tears began to sting her throat and her eyes, she knew that there was only one thing she could do.
She had to get away from this house, from its memories, from the pain that just thinking about it would now always bring her. Tomorrow…first thing tomorrow she would drive into Knutsford and put the house in the hands of an estate agent. She wasn’t going to wait for an auction to be arranged nor for the new motorway route to be disclosed, but one thing she was determined upon and that was that no way, no way was she going to allow either Luke or his fiancée and her greedy father to benefi
t from such a sale. She would have a document drawn up, legally preventing whoever bought the house from selling it for at least five years. She would…
Frantically she drove her brain into a flurry of thoughts and decisions, frantically, despairingly trying to hold at bay the avalanche of anguish she knew was waiting to descend on her, to bury her, to flood her with pain like no pain she had ever known before.
She remembered how Luke had held her only hours ago, how he had touched her, caressed her, spoken to her. She remembered how she had told herself that even if he had not spoken the word ‘love’ it had been there between them, almost a tangible presence; and then she started to shudder as paroxysm after paroxysm of sick self-disgust seized her.
How could she have been so stupid, so naïve, so trusting? A private detective…and yet he had never once mentioned any case to her, and she, fool that she was, had believed him…had believed him when he’d claimed to be as much a stranger to the area as she was herself. Now she understood the reason for all those probing questions about her background, her family. Now she understood why he had kept on returning. Now she understood those times when he had seemed to stand aloof and withdrawn from her, when he had looked at her with cold angry eyes, when she had felt almost that he was two different and separate people. What a complete fool she had been. But no more: Lucinda had opened her eyes to the truth, thankfully before it was too late—for the cottage at least. As far as her own feelings were concerned…
Gulping back a sob, she walked painfully into the sitting-room. The fire still burned as cheerfully, the room still looked as cosily welcoming as it had done before Lucinda’s arrival, but there was no way that Melanie could sit down in it now, knowing that she had prepared it with so much love and joy for Luke’s arrival, for Luke’s presence, just as she had prepared herself for Luke’s pleasure, she thought bitterly, unable to contain the destructive emotions rioting inside her.
And as for her bedroom… She gagged sickly on the nausea still burning inside her, knowing that there was no way she could sleep in that room tonight, nor ever again. She would rather sleep outside on the cold wet earth than sleep in that room, in that bed.
She clutched her stomach as her grief burned through her like a physical pain, her body bent almost double, the firelight shining on the smooth fall of her hair and revealing the pale curve of her cheek and the almost bloodless agony of her mouth, and that was how Luke saw her five minutes later when he pushed open the sitting-room door and walked in.
He had knocked on the back door and, receiving no response, had opened it and walked in; and now, seeing Melanie in obvious distress and pain, he rushed up to her, exclaiming anxiously, ‘Melanie… My God! What’s wrong? Your leg…!’
CHAPTER NINE
FOR a moment shock seized Melanie, completely paralysing her, but then, as Luke stepped forward and touched her, a bolt of fierce rejection ran through her, freeing her, so that she could step back from him and say in a choked voice. ‘Don’t touch me… Don’t come anywhere near me!’
Frantic with self-contempt and misery, she hugged her arms protectively around her body at the same time as she wrenched herself away from him.
‘Melanie, for God’s sake—what’s wrong?’
Oh, but he was a good actor! No one looking at him now could possibly doubt his concern, his confusion. No one, that was, other than someone like herself, or Lucinda, who knew the truth.
‘What’s wrong?’ She laughed hysterically. ‘You can ask me that? I should have thought there was a good deal wrong when a woman allows herself to be used by a man like you…a man who, moreover, obviously considers himself to have some sort of right to sit in moral judgement on others…a man who seems to believe he has some right to take the law into his own hands to interpret and abuse as he sees fit…a man who can quite callously ignore the loneliness and unhappiness of someone, can then ignore that person for years on end and can also claim to know them so well that he has the right to interfere in their most private and personal affairs…a man who can actually be physically intimate with a woman he claims to despise and detest…and you are that kind of man, aren’t you, Luke? When that kind of man can lie and cheat, can do anything he chooses to do, then, yes, I should say there is most certainly something wrong…with him,’ she finished shakily. ‘I should say there is a good deal wrong with him, wouldn’t you, Luke? Oh, and by the way, for your information I did not seduce your second cousin into leaving me this place. I did not even know him, and if you don’t believe me then I suggest you check with his solicitors. In fact, I suggest you would have been far better employed checking with them in the first place, or even simply asking me.
‘But then of course you never really wanted the truth, did you, Luke? What you wanted was to find some excuse for having Mr Burrows’s will overset so that you could inherit in my place, so that you could ensure that your prospective father-in-law could get exactly what he wanted.
‘I should have known, I suppose.’ She was shaking violently now, her teeth chattering together as she forced each word out. Her leg ached as though it were being savaged by sharp teeth, her head ached, her throat was sore, but none of that was anything compared to the pain burning her heart, searing her with the acid of self-contempt.
‘I don’t understand. What the hell are you trying to say to me?’ Luke interrupted her brusquely. ‘When I left here this afternoon—’
‘When you left here this afternoon your fiancée had not been to see me,’ Melanie told him bitterly. ‘But now that she has, it’s no use lying any more, Luke. I know it all…every last mean and sordid detail.’
When she looked at him, Melanie saw that his face had gone a shocked shade of grey-white.
‘My what?’ he demanded.
‘Your fiancée,’ Melanie repeated in a voice as brittle as old glass. ‘Miss Lucinda Hewitson. She even showed me her engagement ring, and she told me about the house her father plans to give you.’
‘Personally, knowing what I do now know about you, I’d run a hundred miles from marriage to a man capable of behaving the way you’ve behaved, Luke, but then obviously the pair of you share a very special moral code; one that isn’t easily understood by people like me.’
She had to turn away from him then in case the anguish that was destroying her inside became visible in her eyes. All she had left now was her pride; a pride that was demanding a very heavy price from her for supporting her now, as she struggled to put aside the deep love she felt towards Luke and to concentrate instead on the reality of the man Lucinda Hewitson had revealed to her, a man so flawed, so devoid of every virtue which Melanie held sacrosanct that she still could not comprehend how she had come to be so easily deceived by him.
‘I want you to leave now, Luke. After all, there is no point in your staying. And as for your scheme to get Mr Burrows’s will overset…’ She turned back to him, her shoulders straight and her spine tense, pride only just masking the intensity of the pain he had caused her as she told him tiredly. ‘You see, you were wrong about me, Luke, and about my relationship with your second cousin. I never knew John Burrows. Never met him. Never even knew he existed until after his death, and if you had come to me honestly and openly in the the first place, instead of playing amateur detective, instead of lying and cheating your way into my life—’ Into my heart, she could have said, but she just managed to resist. If she had been foolish enough to fall in love with him, then that was as much her fault as it was his. ‘If you had come to me openly in the first place,’ she repeated firmly, ‘then I would have told you the truth.’
She started to turn away from him again, too drained to go on, and then froze as unbelievably Luke reached out and took hold of her shoulders, ignoring the freezing rejection of her body and her eyes as he forced her to turn round to face him.
‘Melanie, you’ve got to listen to me. You don’t understand,’ he began, but she stopped him, her face set and her voice crystal clear with revulsion as she told him icily,
‘Oh, yes I do. I understand that you’ve deliberately lied to me…deceived me…used me. I understand that you’re John Burrows’s second cousin, that you expected to inherit this cottage and the land, that you planned to sell it to David Hewitson so that between you you’d make a rich killing when the new motorway extension is approved. You came here intending to discredit me, to have Mr. Burrows’s will overset. Well, it won’t work. You disgust me, do you know that?’ she told him shakily. ‘And if I’ve one regret in my life it’s that I was gullible enough, vulnerable enough to believe in your lies. Well, I promise you this, I’ll never be that credulous again. There were no lengths you weren’t prepared to go to to get what you wanted, were there, Luke? None at all. Even to the extent of having sex with me—presumably so that you could stand up in court and tell everyone just what kind of woman I am…the kind of woman who wouldn’t hesitate to—’ Abruptly she stopped. Not even the intensity of her pain and anger could allow her to put into words the full horror of what was in her mind, that Luke had made love to her…no, had had sex with her—despite what she had felt at the time, there had been nothing loving, nothing tender, nothing caring about the intimacy they had shared—as a means of helping to prove that she was the kind of woman who would deliberately set out to sexually seduce a vulnerable old man out of material greed.
‘Since she seems to know exactly what’s been going on, I can only wonder that Lucinda Hewitson should still want to marry you, but, as I’ve already said, you’re quite obviously a well-matched pair; made for one another, in fact,’ she told him scornfully.
‘Melanie, you’ve got things all wrong!’
She couldn’t believe it; couldn’t believe that he would actually have the gall to go on trying to deceive her when his own fiancée had told her the truth.