by Daphne Clair
‘It’s a way of saying I like it. Your taste in furnishings was always unexpected.’
‘Unexpected?’
‘It seems at odds with your personality.’
‘Perhaps you don’t know as much about my personality as you think.’
‘After more than two years of marriage—’
‘You hadn’t begun to know me.’
He didn’t answer directly, just looking keenly at her for a moment. ‘Even then you wanted to fill our home with antiques.’
‘Not fill it! Just have some about. I don’t recall you objecting.’
‘I didn’t object at all. I’m not saying I didn’t like your taste, just that I find it somewhat surprising.’
‘Perhaps I have hidden depths.’
She spoke lightly, but his eyes were searching as they met hers. ‘Perhaps,’ he said noncommittally.
So he didn’t think so. Tara tried to find some humour in that, and failed.
Sholto moved away from the window. Thinking he was about to take a seat, she sat down. But he’d stopped before one of the pictures, a panoramic landscape in a wide wooden frame. ‘Is this a Hoyte?’ he asked.
‘I doubt it. It’s unsigned, and I don’t suppose it’s worth anything, but I like it.’
‘Where did you find it?’
‘In a house lot from a deceased estate.’
‘Ever had it valued?’
Tara shook her head. ‘I wouldn’t part with it anyway.’
He cast her an enigmatic look and turned to study another picture, then moved to the carved fire surround, and picked up a three-cornered green Wedgwood vase from the mantel, running a finger over the raised design on the china.
Unable to bear the silence any longer, Tara said, ‘Is Averil working again? Where has she flown off to this time?’
Sholto replaced the vase and turned to face her. He leaned a shoulder with apparent nonchalance against the mantel, shoving one hand into his pocket. ‘Bangkok.’
‘She has an interesting life. And she’s willing to give it all up for you?’
‘I didn’t ask her to give up her job. It was Averil’s idea entirely.’
‘Because she wants a family.’
‘Yes.’
Carefully Tara drew in a quiet breath through her nose. ‘I hope everything goes according to plan.’
Sholto’s other hand went into his pocket, and he shifted his feet, crossing one over the other, looking down for a moment at the toe of his impeccably polished shoe. ‘Do you, really?’ he asked, his eyes suddenly meeting hers.
She looked back at him with a feeling of unease. ‘I don’t wish you ill, Sholto,’ she said. ‘I hope... you’ll be very happy.’
‘Do you think I will be?’
Taken aback, Tara replied, ‘I... I don’t think I’m the right person to ask.’
‘I didn’t seriously expect an answer.’ He left the fireplace and went back to the window. ‘Call it a rhetorical question.’ He was standing side-on to her, looking through the glass with a remote expression.
‘Sholto,’ she said after a while, ‘why are you here?’
‘Impulse,’ he said, facing her again.
Impulse? Sholto? Warily, she regarded him. Had he just been at a loose end because Averil was away?
He said abruptly, ‘I think we have some unfinished business between us.’
Tara’s heart seemed to leap into her throat. ‘What...do you mean?’
He didn’t speak for so long she thought he’d changed his mind. Finally he said, as though he was thinking every phrase through, ‘I thought I’d put... our marriage behind me, that I was ready for a new relationship. Until that damned party. I found myself saying things I had no right to say—and feeling things I had no right to feel. I was unprepared—meeting without warning like that was like stepping into a time warp.’
It had been a bit like that for her, too. All the feelings that she’d suppressed so that she could go on living an outwardly normal life had rushed back to the surface.
‘Then,’ Sholto went on grimly, ‘when I saw you at that cafe with two men dancing attendance—’
‘Andy was with Jane,’ Tara protested, ‘not me!’
‘Jane? Is that her name? It figures,’ Sholto said cynically.
‘What do you mean by that?’ Tara queried sharply.
He gave her a withering look. ‘You’re not trying to tell me that your Incredible Hulk is really interested in her! What was it, a blind date you rigged up so you wouldn’t have any real competition?’
Standing up to bring herself nearer to his level, Tara said, ‘It was nothing of the sort. Andy doesn’t need blind dates! He asked Jane to go out with him. And Derek and I just happened to meet them in town that night, so the four of us decided to have supper together. Actually Andy’s very interested in her—not that I’m obliged to explain anything to you!’
‘All right.’ He took a couple of steps away from the window, running a hand over his hair and down the back of his neck. Looking at a point on the wall beyond her shoulder, he said, ‘I have some unresolved feelings about—what happened to us. I don’t want to carry that baggage into my new marriage. It wouldn’t be fair to Averil. If you and I could... talk things out, it might help.’
‘As I remember,’ Tara said bitterly, ‘you weren’t that keen on talking things out five years ago.’
‘There wasn’t much point.’
‘But there is now? You were the one who wanted a divorce,’ she reminded him.
‘Do you know what the alternative was?’ he demanded.
‘Alternative? What alternative?’
‘I think I’d have killed you,’ Sholto said flatly. ‘And Derek.’
Tara’s eyes widened, her lips parting. ‘You’re making that up,’ she said. ‘You were perfectly calm.’
His lips moved cynically in a semblance of a smile. ‘Are you still as naive as you were then?’
‘I know you were angry—but it was such cold anger.’ Without thinking, she brought her arms across her breasts to stop an involuntary shiver. ‘There was no emotion in it.’
‘You don’t really believe that.’
‘I mean there was no... no real passion.’
‘Passion?’
‘It wasn’t personal,’ Tara said stubbornly. ‘I realise you were furious, but it had nothing to do with me as a person in my own right. It was because I was yours—your wife. And you thought Derek had... stolen something from you.’
There was a long silence. Sholto’s brows were drawn heavily together as he stared at her, hard. ‘Are you saying,’ he asked her at last, ‘that I looked on you as my property?’
Tara’s arms dropped. ‘Didn’t you?’
‘For God’s sake, do you really think I’m that medieval?’
Tara shrugged. ‘There are still men like that around. Plenty of them.’
‘And I’m supposed to be one? Thanks.’
‘It just seemed to have more to do with your pride, your self-image, than with us as a couple—our relationship.’
He shook his head as if to clear it. ‘I don’t believe this!’
‘I’m just telling you how it looked from my perspective. I don’t suppose for a minute that you saw it that way.’
‘I never thought I owned you, Tara!’
‘Never consciously, perhaps. And it wasn’t entirely your fault. I was too young for marriage—I realise that, now. But I was dazzled by you.’ She smiled wryly. ‘Oh, I know you weren’t in love with me—’
‘Why do you say that?’ he asked swiftly.
‘I fooled myself at the time that you were,’ she said, still smiling. ‘Because I wanted it to be true—’
‘Why,’ he interrupted, ‘do you think I married you?’
‘Oh, several reasons. You were attracted to me on a physical level—’
‘Attracted hardly covers it,’ Sholto told her dryly.
‘—after all, at nineteen, what did I have to offer a man
of twenty-eight but a ripe young body?’
‘There was no shortage of ripe young bodies I could have had for the asking—or at least, at a price. You’ve no need to put yourself down this way.’
Biting back her instinctive reply to his first statement, she said, ‘I’m trying to be honest. That was one factor— and guilt was another.’
‘Guilt?’
‘As I told you at the time, you weren’t to blame. I wanted you at least as much as you wanted me. And I knew even then that if you’d realised I was a virgin you wouldn’t have made love to me. I know you felt guilty about it, and that was another reason you offered to marry me.’
‘We’d been sleeping together for months before I suggested marriage.’
‘On my twentieth birthday. Had you been waiting until you thought I was old enough?’
‘If you must know, I was well aware that you were still too young. But I went ahead anyway because—’
Tara filled in the silence as he stopped in mid-sentence. ‘Because you thought you owed it to me.’
‘It was a lot more than that.’
‘There were other reasons, of course. I’d been so dependent on you ever since my father’s death, you felt responsible for me. But marriage—that really wasn’t necessary, Sholto.’
‘It was necessary for me,’ he said harshly. ‘Don’t think I was sacrificing myself for you, Tara! Nothing could be further from the truth.’
‘To square your conscience,’ she said. ‘I know. I think even at the time I knew, but I was very young, and I still had dreams.’
He was studying her with an expression almost of dislike. ‘And just when did you work out this fascinating theory?’
She shrugged. ‘Wisdom comes with maturity. I guess it’s gradually dawned on me since our divorce.’
‘You think I treated you like a sex object?’
‘It was a bit more complicated than that.’
‘At least you acknowledge that much!’
‘I’m not holding you responsible, Sholto. You did what seemed right at the time. I’m sure you had the best of intentions.’
He raised his eyes. ‘Sweet heaven! Will you stop making excuses for me—do you think I didn’t justify myself in my own mind a hundred times a day during our marriage? I was the adult, at the time. I should have known better!’
‘That’s the crux of it, isn’t it?’ Tara asked. ‘You never did treat me as an equal. I was someone you felt responsible for, that you had to control just as you controlled your business and everything else in your life. Oh, you were right, in a way,’ she added as he took a step towards her, scowling. ‘I hadn’t grown up. I should have confronted you on a rational, adult level instead of throwing tantrums and then making a stupid, juvenile attempt to get your attention. It backfired badly.’
‘I’m sure there were faults on both sides,’ he said formally, ‘but you certainly found a way to get back at me for anything you imagined I might have done to you.’
‘You still don’t believe that nothing happened, do you?’ Tara asked huskily.
‘That’s hardly the point.’ She saw the tension in his body, heard it in his voice. ‘If I’d arrived a few moments later—or earlier—I’d have found you in bed with my so-called best friend. Whether I discovered you before or after the fact isn’t really relevant.’
‘Sholto, I’m sorry — ‘
‘That I do believe,’ he drawled. ‘You complain now, but at the time you enjoyed being married to me—at least in a material sense I was able to give you pretty much all you wanted.’
‘Sholto—’
‘Did you think I was so besotted I’d turn a blind eye— pretend I didn’t care?’
‘That was just what it was about!’ Tara said desperately. ‘That you didn’t care! If you had you would at least have let me try to explain.’
‘Explanations were a bit redundant, don’t you think? How were you going to explain being in our bedroom with Derek, both of you half-undressed? It would have to be a bloody good story!’
‘Sholto—believe me—’
‘That’s a great start!’ He folded his arms, adopting an exaggerated attitude of patient listening, a faint sneer on his lips.
Tara stared at him helplessly, and swallowed. Then her chin came up and she resolutely met his eyes. Keeping her voice quiet and even, she said, ‘You’ve already made up your mind not to listen, just as you did before. This isn’t working, Sholto. I think you had better leave.’
He remained where he was, staring at her, and a new light came into his eyes, perhaps a hint of surprised respect. Finally he nodded and unfolded his arms. ‘You’re right,’ he said. ‘It was a bad idea.’
He walked past her with a bleak expression on his face. Tara followed him down the dim passageway to the front door, standing a foot or so behind him as he turned the knob to open it.
It was an old door and in humid or damp weather it sometimes stuck. When it didn’t give immediately he tugged impatiently, and it came free so suddenly that his elbow jerked back, driving against her breast.
She gave a small cry of pain, a hand going to her breast, even as Sholto whirled with a muffled oath, and his fingers closed on her shoulders. ‘Have I hurt you?’
‘It’s all right.’ Instinctively she raised her face to look at him, and found him so overwhelmingly near that her voice faltered.
Even in the inadequate light she saw the gradual softening of his features, the dark fire in his eyes. His eyes were locked with hers and one of his hands moved slowly away from her shoulder and down, and as her own hand came to rest over her heart, his replaced it on her breast, warm and cherishing. ‘Here?’ he murmured, as his heavy-lidded gaze followed.
Her heart was thudding unevenly. She knew she should draw away, but was quite unable to. Closing her eyes, she whispered in agony that had nothing to do with the physical hurt, ‘Sholto...’
His hand was stroking lightly, carefully, as though he was afraid of hurting her more. And his other hand no longer imprisoned her shoulder, but was at her waist, bringing her snugly to the hard warmth of his body. She flattened both palms against his chest, feeling the rise of his ribs through the thin cotton of his shirt. ‘Sholto...’
‘Why are you shivering?’ His voice was deep and slow, as though he, too, was caught in a hypnotic spell, a magic web of sensation that bound them inextricably to each other.
‘I’m...afraid.’ She made herself open her eyes and look at him.
‘Of me?’ His hand stopped moving, but she was acutely conscious of it gently enfolding her breast.
‘Of... of this,’ she said tensely.
‘God!’ Sholto breathed roughly. ‘You’re not the only one.’
He bent his head almost unwillingly, and Tara’s lips parted, trying to say, No!
But her voice refused to utter the word, and then it was too late. Sholto’s mouth had found hers, and with a smothered cry she surrendered to his passionate assault on her senses. Her arms went up to his shoulders, then round his neck, while he kissed her as if only she could slake some long-starved, driving need within him.
His hand left her breast to rove over her waist and hip, then behind her, intimately shaping her lower body, splaying over the rounded curves and urging her closer so that she couldn’t help recognising his instant arousal.
The scent of him was all around her, soap and fresh sweat and musk, and she felt him shudder as she moved longingly against him, spurred by memory and the erotic intimacy of the kiss.
He turned slightly, bringing her with him, wrapped his arms about her and eased his thigh between hers, sending a wave of heat throughout her entire being. One hand fumbled at her hair, drawing the confining scarf down its length, freeing the luxuriant waves.
Both hands in her hair, he withdrew his mouth at last from hers, and buried his face in the springing, soft abundance.
The darkness seemed to swirl about them. Tara’s fingers were on the warm, damp skin of his neck
, aware of the pulse beating unevenly below the surface. She tried to think, to fight free of the miasma of need and sensual enthralment that all but engulfed her; made a small, fluttery movement of negation, her breath brushing his cheek as she said, ‘Sholto... Sholto! Why are you doing this? What do you want?’
She felt the sudden rigidity of his arms before he groaned deep in his throat and lifted his face, gazing down at her as though trying to make out just who she was.
Then he heaved air into his lungs and abruptly freed her, turning to smash both his fists against the wall, his forehead resting against it between them. The first, muffled expletive was something she didn’t catch. He took another shuddering breath and said through gritted teeth, ‘Damn you, Tara! You always were a witch. God, I should have known better than to come within a hundred yards of you!’
Silently Tara recoiled a couple of steps, her clenched hands pressed above her waist. ‘I didn’t ask you to kiss me,’ she said raggedly. ‘I didn’t even want to see you!’
‘I know.’ He straightened up, but didn’t turn to look at her. ‘I know,’ he repeated. ‘It was my own stupid idea. I’m sorry if I’ve...raised any false expectations. We’ll both get over it. Nothing a cold shower won’t fix.’
He groped almost drunkenly to the door, wrenched it wider and slammed it behind him as he stepped into the night.
Tara’s hands dropped to her sides, still clenched into fists. She wanted to throw something at the door—in lieu of Sholto’s dark head. She’d like to smash something, knowing that he’d hear the sound of it, that he’d know her fury was directed at him.
She didn’t need a cold shower. The finality of that slammed door was enough to quell the unbidden waves of desire that he’d evoked with such humiliating, devastating ease. She felt chilled now with reaction. Where the hell did he get off, barging into her home, her life, without an invitation, expecting her to help him sort out his problems with his prospective new wife, having the gall to start making love to her and then walk out like that? Let alone accusing her of bewitching him because he couldn’t keep his raging hormones under control while his fiancée was away!
Well, she told herself cynically, locking up the house and preparing for bed, it was a novelty to be on the other side of the triangle—instead of the cheated wife she was the Other Woman, she supposed.