by Penny Jordan
‘Positive,’ Jenny confirmed firmly.
‘Where is…where is Gideon, by the way?’ Courage asked her suddenly, remembering his angry hammering on her door earlier in the evening.
‘In London. He’s gone to see the Princess,’ Jenny told her, watching her compassionately as the colour drained from her face, leaving it betraying what she was feeling.
‘I always thought that when I loved a man it would be…that he would feel the same way; that we would have mutual respect for one another, and that…’ Courage bit her lip, shaking her head as her emotions overwhelmed her.
‘Can I see you for a moment, please, Gideon?’
Courage tensed herself ready for a refusal as Gideon frowned forbiddingly down at her. He had returned from London about an hour ago and she had been sitting dry-mouthed in her own office ever since, her stomach churning in anticipation of the moment when she would hand him the cheque to repay her loan.
She knew she ought to be feeling triumphant and relieved, but instead…
‘What now? Can’t it wait until later…until tonight…?’
Courage flushed brilliantly as his voice deepened with deliberate innuendo.
‘No…no, I’m afraid it can’t.’ She told him. ‘I…I want to give you this.’
Her hand trembled visibly as she slid the envelope on to his desk. She couldn’t risk encouraging any kind of physical contact with him… She didn’t dare.
She saw the way his frown deepened as he stared at the envelope before picking it up and opening it.
Courage knew that she was holding her breath. She desperately wanted to turn and run, but she refused to give in to such a cowardly temptation.
‘I see… And where exactly did you get this?’
The carefully measured ice-cold words made Courage feel sick with apprehension. She knew him so well now—his moods, the controlled calm that preceded his anger.
‘A…a friend gave it to me…’ Not for anything was she going to betray Jenny’s part in what had happened—ever. Even if Jenny had insisted that she was going to hand in her notice.
‘A friend... The same friend who I saw you bidding such a fond farewell to yesterday afternoon, no doubt. What did you do for him, Courage? What did you promise him in return for this? Unlimited access to your body…every kind of sexual favour and delight he might want…? And was it just a promise you gave him, or has he already had a foretaste of what kind of payment he’s going to get? Perhaps he even already knows…
‘Does he, Courage? Is that why he came here looking for you, because he knows just how good you are in bed? Just how you can drive a man insane with desire and lust? Just how you can incite him to want to possess you over and over again…? Is that it, Courage… Is that why he came here looking for you?
‘Did he take you while you still had the scent of my possession—my sex—on your body? Did he—?’
‘Stop it. Stop it!’ Courage couldn’t stand any more. Tears of rage and humiliation poured down her face. ‘I hate you. I hate you—do you hear…? And I’m leaving here right now and there’s nothing you can do to stop me…nothing.’
‘Oh, no?’
While Courage watched, her heart pounding frantically in a mixture of anger and pain, he tore up the cheque she had just given him.
‘You still owe me…’ he told her silkily. ‘And there’s no way I’m letting you go away.
‘How did he kiss you, Courage?’ he demanded thickly as he reached for her, covering her mouth in a fiercely punishing kiss. ‘Was it like this…? How did he touch you? What did you do for him to get him to part with that money? What…?’
His hand was already on her breast, and to her disgust Courage could feel her body starting to respond to his touch.
‘Nothing. There was nothing,’ she protested frantically.
‘You’re lying,’ Gideon contradicted her flatly.
‘No, she’s not… I loaned her the money.’
Neither of them had heard the door open, or even seen Jenny come into the room.
‘I loaned her the money after she broke down and told me how you’d treated her…blackmailed her. Go and pack your things, Courage,’ Jenny told her quietly, before she turned back to Gideon and said coldly, ‘In my view you should be imprisoned and disgraced for what you’ve done to Courage. But I know she’s far too soft-hearted to share that opinion. You’re a bully and a sadist, and even worse you’re apparently incapable of compassion or understanding…’
Courage fled without waiting to hear any more.
Gideon’s accusations and comments had left her feeling degraded and physically sick, and she knew that they would haunt her for the rest of her life.
As she packed her clothes haphazardly into her cases she acknowledged that she was lucky to have Gran’s cottage to go to. She could stay there until Gran came home and then decide what to do about her future.
Right now she needed time—time to come to terms with what had happened and with herself, her own emotions, her self-betrayal.
Courage frowned as she studied her bank statement. It worried her that Gideon had still not cleared the cheque she had left on his desk to replace the one he had torn up, even though it was now almost a fortnight since she had left.
In another three weeks her grandmother would be coming home and Jenny, who was spending a couple of weeks visiting her daughter, had repeatedly assured Courage that she was more than happy to move in with her grandmother and keep an eye on her until the specialist pronounced her well enough to live alone again.
All she had to do now was telephone her old employers and tell them that she was free to come back to work for them and she could then draw a line under the past and write off everything that had happened since Gideon had come back into her life.
Pain darkened her eyes. If only things were so easy. She still woke up in the night with Gideon’s name on her lips and her face wet with tears.
What was wrong with her? She knew what kind of man he was… how lucky she had been to escape from him.
‘During the day I’m all right—sort of,’ she had told Jenny shakily. ‘It’s at night, when I remember…when I dream… It’s as though a part of me still refuses to accept the way he really is…still clings to the feelings I had for him when I was sixteen.’
‘Loving someone, especially when it’s the wrong someone, isn’t easy to get over,’ Jenny had comforted her. ‘It takes time, Courage. After all, you’ve spent years clinging to him as your ideal—your perfect lover. When my husband died I was so very angry… With myself because I hadn’t realised how ill he was… With the hospital because they hadn’t been able to save him, and with him too, for dying and leaving me alone…unprepared… My doctor sent me to a counsellor, who told me to try writing down exactly how I felt. How I’d felt before he died and then afterwards… Although I didn’t think it would, it did actually help. You could always try doing the same thing.’
Writing it down, reliving all that pain—what purpose would it serve? Courage had asked herself. But still she had followed Jenny’s advice… was still following it—faithfully recording everything that had happened in the hours leading up to that first cataclysmic meeting with Gideon, when she hadn’t known who he was…the trauma which had followed… her immature, unawakened idealisation of him…her foolish belief that because he had slept with her it must mean he loved her…and the starkness of what had followed, with its disillusionment and pain.
It hadn’t helped, though. All it had done was to make her dreams of him all the more intense, like her longing for him. Quickly she bit down on her lip.
The evenings were starting to draw in now. Summer was over and autumn had begun. The fields beyond the house were covered in mist in the mornings and the air had a sharp chill to it at night. It was only eight o’clock but already it was almost dark.
The evenings were the worst time for her. During the day she managed to keep busy, to keep her thoughts and her emotions at bay, but in the evening, wit
h the knowledge that the night lay ahead of her…
Tonight, for some reason, she had decided to light a fire. Now it needed more logs, and she would have to go out to the outhouse to get them.
Picking up the log basket, she headed for the back door, leaving it open as she covered the short distance between it and the outhouse. It took nearly five minutes for her to fill the basket, which was then so heavy that she could barely carry it in.
Once she had reached the kitchen she put it down with a sigh of relief before going to close and lock the back door, grimacing as she saw the dust and grime on her hands.
She picked up the basket again, using her hip to push open the sitting-room door. Her view of the room was obstructed by the basket, so that she didn’t realise until she had reached the fireplace and set it down that someone else was already in the room.
The shock made her body feel cold and heavy. ‘Gideon,’ she whispered in disbelief. ‘What are…? How did you get in…? What are you doing here?’
‘The door was open. I wanted to see you… I had to see you.’
He looked different—thinner… more tired…older, somehow.
‘I’m not coming back. You…you can’t make me…’ she started to protest in panic, backing away from him, her hand held out defensively in front of her body as though to ward him off.
An expression that in another man might have been pain touched his eyes, fleetingly hardening his face.
‘No. I can’t make you,’ he agreed heavily. ‘Your grandmother tells me that she’ll be coming home soon.’
‘Not for another few weeks,’ Courage told him automatically, before freezing and demanding anxiously, ‘How do you know that? What have you said to her…? What have you done…?’
‘I haven’t done anything, and as for what I’ve said to her, it’s more a matter of what she has said to me. It seems I owe you an apology, Courage. Several apologies, in fact. I had no idea… It never occurred to me… I hadn’t realised how young you were, emotionally and sexually. You were so warm… so welcoming. So apparently knowing. I was wrong about you all those years ago,’ he told her bleakly. ‘Very wrong…’
Courage shivered. ‘What have you been saying to her? What have you—’
‘I simply asked her if she would mind talking to me about the past. She was very candid…very open… Especially in her denouncement of your stepfather. She seemed to think there was even a risk that he might—’
Courage listened, her lips dry with fear and shame, and a nauseous mixture in her stomach.
‘I don’t want to talk about it. It’s over…finished… And…and nothing ever actually happened…’
‘But you were afraid it might?’ Gideon pressed her.
‘I…I was afraid,’ Courage admitted unable to say any more.
‘And that was why you agreed to take your stepsister’s place with me?’
‘I… She… Yes. She was jealous of her father’s attention towards me. I…I think she wanted to discredit me in his eyes… I don’t think she ever had any intention of hurting you. Why are you bringing this up now?’ she asked him shakily. ‘I don’t want to talk about it. It’s over…finished…’
‘Is it…? I don’t think so. There’s still—’
‘There’s still what?’ Courage interrupted him frantically. ‘Still the money I owe you? The loan…?’
‘The loan is cancelled,’ Gideon told her heavily. ‘It no longer exists.’
For a moment Courage thought she must have misheard him.
‘It’s the least I can do,’ Gideon continued distantly. ‘Call it compensation, if you wish, for—’
‘Compensation…’ Courage stared at him, fury taking the place of her earlier fear. ‘Compensation… Do you honestly think that money—that anything could ever compensate me for what you’ve done… for what you’ve made me do? For the way you’ve destroyed everything that I’ve ever believed in…everything that I’ve ever valued? Do you think money is going to stop me lying awake at night, filled with loathing and disgust for myself…? Do you think it is ever going to make me feel whole again… clean…? Make me believe that I can… give myself… share my life with a decent, caring man who loves me? A man who I can’t, daren’t let know what I’ve done. What kind of woman I really am…’
‘And what kind of woman is that?’ Gideon interrupted her quietly.
‘What kind—?’ Courage gave a bitter laugh. ‘Surely you don’t need to ask—you already know.’
Tears burned hotly in her eyes, blurring her vision, but even so she forced herself to raise her head and look straight at him.
‘After all, you were the one who destroyed my illusions about myself, who made me see that no matter how much I might loathe and hate you with my mind, my body—’ Courage heard her voice crack and knew that she couldn’t go on.
‘Your body responded to me…wanted me…as mine wanted you.’
‘Everyone knows that it’s perfectly acceptable for a man to experience lust. To—’
‘Lust? My God, you are naive. Lust doesn’t make you cry out with longing for someone at night. It doesn’t make you ache for them and yearn for them. It doesn’t fill your every waking thought with them and drive you to the point of insanity through wanting them. Lust doesn’t possess and obsess you to the point where nothing else, no one else matters… Lust doesn’t fill you with blind, insane jealousy. It doesn’t warp your thinking, and twist your guts into knots. Lust doesn’t make you weep for the warmth of someone’s arms, for the comfort of their body. It doesn’t make you long to break down the barriers they’ve put around themselves and make them respond to your emotions…your needs…your desire. But love does!’
Courage had gone white as she listened to him cataloguing her emotions with such deadly accuracy that she felt as though he had witnessed every single one of them. All the time, when she had clung to the belief that at least he didn’t know, couldn’t know how she really felt about him, she had been wrong…
She clung shakily to the back of the chair as she stammered. ‘How… how did you know that I… that I felt like that…?’
It must be much hotter in the room than she had realised, because all of a sudden his face looked unfam-iliarly flushed.
‘I didn’t,’ he told her roughly. ‘Those weren’t your emotions I was just describing, they were mine.’
Courage stared at him in total disbelief.
‘You can’t mean that,’ she protested shakily. ‘You can’t really love me…’
‘Why not? Because I hurt you…tried to demolish and destroy you? Love isn’t always pure and innocent. It has its dark side too. I wanted you very badly that night, you know…’
‘You didn’t know me,’ Courage protested. ‘You thought I was Laney. It was her you were expecting. Her you wanted…’
Gideon shook his head.
‘I was filling in time, that was all… Playing the same game I thought she was playing… Until I held you…touched you… kissed you—and then I knew.’
He stopped speaking abruptly, his body tensing.
‘I dreamed of you that night,’ he told her huskily, ‘and for what felt like a lifetime of nights afterwards. In fact…’ He frowned and paused. ‘I’ve never stopped dreaming about you…not totally. Every time I thought I’d put the past behind me, pushed you out of my mind, my dreams, my memories, you’d come back again to haunt me. I dreamed about you the night before you came for your interview.’
‘You wanted to hurt me… punish me…’ Courage reminded him.
‘I wanted to hurt and punish myself. To make myself realise just what you were. Only, it didn’t work. The more I tried to rid myself of my feelings for you, the more enmeshed I became in them.
‘You must have realised,’ he told her harshly. ‘When I touched you…held you…made love to you. You must have known…guessed…’
‘You said it was just sex,’ Courage told him huskily. ‘You said—’
‘You must have known,’ Gideon in
sisted, overriding her disjointed speech.
‘You didn’t know that I was…that I hadn’t…that there hadn’t been anyone else,’ Courage told him quietly.
Fresh tears blurred her eyes as she saw the way he was looking at her, the pain in his expression.
His soft, agonised, ‘Oh, my God,’ made her close her eyes and keep them closed, just long enough for him to cross the space that divided them.
Courage tensed automatically as she felt him take hold of her.
‘It hurt so much to hear you say something like that when I’d wanted… waited…’ Courage told him shakily from the protection of his arms.
‘I was a fool—a jealous, love-crazed fool,’ Gideon acknowledged.
‘It hurt even more later… After… afterwards, when you held me as though… When you pretended to be so tender, so caring…so loving.’
‘I wasn’t pretending. That was exactly how I did feel, and, my God, how I hated myself for being so weak, and you as well, for witnessing my weakness. Can we start again, Courage, or is it too late?’ he begged as he looked down at her.
‘I…’
‘We could start again right from the beginning,’ Gideon promised throatily, whispering the words in her ear as he drew her closer. ‘Right from the very be-ginning… that very first night when I reached out in the darkness and found I was holding a dream…my love in my arms.
‘You kissed me so sweetly that night… Can you remember…? I touched your lips, your mouth, and you trembled so hard I was afraid that you might actually faint.’
‘I was shocked…afraid… I’d never felt like that—never guessed I could feel like that… It was all so new to me…’
‘And to me,’ Gideon told her huskily. ‘Just give me a chance, Courage. I’ll court you properly, slowly… Let you take your time…set your own pace.’
‘I’m afraid, Gideon,’ Courage told him. ‘Afraid of how much I want you… Afraid of loving you… Afraid of being hurt…’
But she still raised her face for his kiss, and clung tight to him as he wrapped his arms around her, kissing her with slow, deliberate sweetness while his heart hammered frantically against her body.