It was on the Friday, just under a week after Fausto's proposal, that the inevitable explosion finally occurred. The seeds were sown as they were sharing an uneasy lunch out on the terrace. With an air of almost callous indifference to her sensibilities, Fausto suddenly remarked, 'I expect you're remembering that I'm dining with Bea tonight?'
She hadn't forgotten. It was just one among dozens of niggling anxieties that had been preying on her mind for days. 'Of course not.' But she had been praying that he might have cancelled it.
'Good.' He dropped his eyes down to his plate again, summarily dismissing her. 'I'll be leaving here about eight.'
'I'm not invited, I suppose?' It was an empty question. She knew the answer before the words had left her lips. But she hadn't expected him to phrase it quite so brutally.
'Most definitely not. The last thing I want is to spend an evening watching you two at each other's throats.'
She winced—but she knew that wasn't the real reason. He really just wanted to have the countess to himself. 'So it's pleasure rather than business, I presume?'
His eyes snapped up. 'Why do you ask?'
'No reason.'
'Good. Then there's no reason why I should answer you.' He looked her straight in the eye then, and there was malice there. 'You and I have no commitment to one another as far as I know. I don't go asking you about your personal affairs.'
Tanya hated him for that. She hated him for deliberately hurting her, and for the way, over the past few days, he had never once let his composure slip. And it struck her again that marriage, to Fausto Cabrini, was probably just another business deal. And that she— presentable, intelligent and young enough to bear him many heirs—had apparently fitted the bill as a suitable candidate. With the additional bonus, of course, that she had been a virgin. For she had not forgotten how his proposal had come only after he had personally satisfied himself on that particular point.
He had once confided to her, had he not, that he had neither conscience, soul nor heart? At least she would never be able to say that she hadn't been warned.
It was really too much, though, to expect her just to stay docilely at home while he went traipsing off to dinner with that tramp. That was surely the ultimate in deliberate offensiveness. Almost more than flesh and blood could bear.
She had dinner alone on a tray in her room and spent the rest of the evening, in a kind of orgy of masochism, torturing herself with images of Fausto and the countess on their dinner date. The two of them sharing some secluded table, gazing lustfully across the candlelight into each other's eyes. The countess, of course, tricked out like the vulgar little vamp she was, her gaudy mouth purring rapturously at every smart remark her escort made, her matching gaudy fingernails clutching possessively at his sleeve. And he, in his vanity, would be lapping it up.
About ten o'clock, she went downstairs to the drawing-room and poured herself an Armagnac. It failed, however, to blunt her imagination as she had hoped it would. On the contrary, it simply seemed to fire the more lurid corners of her brain. She was forced to pour herself another one to blot the evil visions out.
The phone rang. She struggled to her feet and raced across to answer it. Maybe it was Fausto calling to apologise.
It was not. 'Tanya! Tanya, sweetheart, don't be alarmed, but I'm calling from a friend's house in Luxembourg!'
Tanya frowned as she instantly recognised her father's voice. 'Luxembourg! What in the name of heaven are you doing there?'
'I told you not to get alarmed,' Devlin continued on a blithely cheerful note. 'I'm fine. I discharged myself from the clinic this afternoon and I've come here to visit an old business chum of mine. Got a bit of a deal brewing, you see. I'm off to Stuttgart tomorrow, then Paris for a couple of days. I'll phone you again in a week or so's time.' There was a sudden crackling on the line.
'Father, Father…' It was all too much to take in at one go. She clutched the receiver anxiously to her ear. 'Tell me what's going on? Why did you leave the clinic? Why didn't you let me know that you were going to discharge yourself?'
But the line had gone bad. Through the interference she heard him say, 'Don't worry. I'll call you from Paris.' Then the line went dead.
She sat down again and cradled her drink between trembling hands. What on earth was going on? First, Fausto abandoned her to go off and have dinner with the countess in Milan, then Devlin phoned out of the blue from Luxembourg and casually entreated her not to be alarmed! Her whole world was suddenly falling apart at the seams.
She downed the drink and got up stiffly to pour herself another one. It was all Fausto's fault, of course. His fault that she was suffering such agonies; his fault, too, that her father had made this rash and foolish move. And what did he care? Nothing. While the world was rattling down about her ears, he was making love to the countess. She glanced at her watch. It was almost twelve. That was probably precisely what he was doing now.
By the time she at last heard his key in the lock, a little after one o'clock, she had worked herself up into an emotional ferment. As his footsteps sounded across the hall, uncaring and briskly confident, she was ready to demolish him in one go. He appeared in the drawing-room doorway, a tall figure in a white jacket and black trousers—and, in spite of her anger, her heart turned over at the sight of him.
'What are you doing up at this time of night?' He was wearing no tie and the top few buttons of his white silk shirt were open. Had he dressed in a hurry? Tanya asked herself.
'Waiting for you, as a matter of fact.'
He seemed to consider her answer. 'Well, that's uncommonly decent of you.' He leaned against the door-frame with a self-congratulatory smile. 'Since you're so interested, I had a lovely time. Bea sends you her love, by the way.'
'You may have need of that particular commodity. I don't.' She stared back at him ungraciously, her eyes raking his face for tell-tale lipstick smudges, her nostrils sniffing the air for the lingering give-away of female scent. She could divine neither, though she found no solace in the fact. Fausto Cabrini, she knew, was much too clever to be foiled by such crude detection work.
He dislodged himself from the doorway, crossed to the drinks table without looking at her and poured a small measure of what was left of the Armagnac. 'You've been knocking it back a bit,' he said.
'And what else was I supposed to do? Sit here with my macramé while you were having a night out on the town?' It was meant to sound scathing, but it only came out sounding peeved.
He swirled the amber-coloured liquid round in his glass and threw her a darkly reproving look. 'What you do in your own time, Tanya, is really no concern of mine. As I pointed out to you already today, in matters private you are not accountable to me—and I, most definitely, am not accountable to you.'
She glared at him. 'Don't worry, I have no wish to know what you and your precious countess have been up to till this hour.' The anger inside her was growing so fierce it seemed to burn a hole right through her abdomen. 'But I thought you might be interested to know that my father telephoned tonight. From Luxembourg,' she emphasised.
He frowned. 'What's he doing there?'
'Some wild business scheme, I understand. He's discharged himself from the clinic' She spat the words at him like an accusation, her lips twisting bitterly around each angry syllable. 'He's worried about paying back that wretched loan of yours.'
A crease appeared between the jet-black brows. 'Where is he staying? Did he tell you that?'
'I've no idea. We were cut off before I had a chance to ask him anything. At a friend's house, he said, though he didn't say whose. He's off to Stuttgart tomorrow. And Paris after that.'
Fausto let slip a colourful oath before crossing quickly to the phone. He laid down his drink and snatched the receiver up.
'Who are you calling?' Tanya asked as she watched him quickly punch some numbers in.
'The clinic.'
'At this hour?'
'My dear,' he told her with an arid smile, 'for the fees
I pay, I expect service right round the clock.' He turned his back and began to speak in rapid Italian to someone at the other end.
Tanya stared dolefully into her half-empty glass. Why hadn't she thought of phoning Switzerland? Then she remembered. Ah yes, the Armagnac. Disconsolately she laid her glass down on the coffee-table in front of her.
A moment later, it seemed, he was standing just a couple of feet away. 'The clinic confirms that your father discharged himself just after lunch this afternoon. It was against their advice—they would have preferred him to stay on for another couple of weeks—but, all the same, I don't think we should be too concerned. The senior consultant I spoke to assured me he's well on the road to a full recovery. As long as he's sensible and keeps taking the medication he's been prescribed, he should be perfectly OK.'
As he came to the end of his calm recitation, Tanya fixed him with a resentful stare. 'And I suppose you would call rushing around all over Europe being sensible?' He was always so sure of himself! So absolutely and infuriatingly in control!
'I can only repeat what the doctor said.' There was an unmistakable edge of warning in his voice. 'I can appreciate that you're upset, but remember your father's a grown man with enough intelligence to know what his physical limitations are. I'm sure he won't take any foolish risks.'
'Oh, is that so? And what would you know about what my father's likely to do? You don't even know him. You don't even give a damn for him, so why pretend?' She could hardly contain the irrational fury that was raging through her now. 'You didn't even care for your own father!' she accused. 'You told me so yourself! You don't really care for anyone, do you?'
He hadn't moved, but the tension she could sense in him was almost overpowering. The muscles around his mouth and jaw were fiercely clenched. His eyes burned like black coals in his face. 'I wouldn't advise you to pursue that line of talk with me,' he advised, the words ground out harshly through tight-set lips. 'You're behaving hysterically. I suggest you calm yourself. Right now.'
Somewhere in the back of her fevered and alcohol-distorted brain she knew that he was right. She was overreacting, succumbing to the intolerable tensions of the past few days. But the urge to defy him was uncontrollable. With a sob of bitter frustration, she reached out and swept the half-empty glass of Armagnac from the tabletop with the back of her hand. 'Damn you!' she screamed as it shattered into fragments at his feet. 'Why couldn't you just stay out of my life?'
Before she knew what was happening, he had grabbed her roughly by both shoulders and hauled her unceremoniously to her feet. 'You little vixen!' he gritted, shaking her. 'How dare you behave like a spoiled child. Stop it this minute or I'll—'
'You'll what?' she challenged recklessly, refusing to flinch from the passion of anger that had gathered deep in his eyes. 'Will you beat me into submission? Turn on the bully-boy tactics again? I wouldn't put it past you!'
'And you might be right!' For a moment, the expression on the strongly chiselled features was almost dangerous. But the moment passed. 'Is this little exhibition out of genuine concern for your father—' he allowed a small but significant pause before continuing'— or because I had dinner with Bea tonight?'
'I wouldn't care if you had dinner with that silly bloody woman every night!'
'I see.' He smiled a faintly triumphant smile and thrust her back into her seat again. 'Such jealousy is really rather flattering, you know.'
She threw him a look of total dislike, hating the craven way she had revealed herself to him. 'You bastard!' she spat at him between her teeth. 'I hate your guts!'
The tall, dark figure continued to stand there, watching her, the expression on his face unreadable. Then, 'Goodnight, Tanya,' he said at last. He turned and walked out of the room.
Tanya couldn't sleep at all after she had gone to bed. Long after the helpless storm of tears had subsided, she tossed and turned. Far from relieving all the pent-up emotions that had been simmering inside, her outburst had simply brought them to the boil. She felt ashamed, confused, resentful, and totally at odds to understand the tumult of conflicting passions that were tearing her apart. The last, slender thread of her control, it seemed, was finally snapping.
She stared into the darkness, lonely and afraid, and wondered what on earth was happening to her. Never— not even in the dark days when her mother had died, nor more recently when Devlin himself had been so close to death—had she experienced the desolation that engulfed her now. It was no good. She had to speak to somebody.
She sat up abruptly, switched on the light, and stared for a seemingly endless moment at the blue phone on the table by the bed. Then she snatched up the receiver, held her breath and resolutely punched the number—nine— that connected with Fausto's room.
Her heart was racing madly as she listened to the ringing tone. What on earth was she going to say to him when he finally answered? And, more to the point, how was he going to react to her waking him like this in the middle of the night?
He would probably be furious, she reasoned, remembering the incandescent, white-hot rage that had burned in the dark eyes earlier. And it was she who had provoked that fury, after all, with those cruel accusations that she regretted now. What she had said about him and his father, she realised now in her sobered state, had been low and utterly despicable. A confidence betrayed and turned against the one who, in trust, had confided it. He would surely never forgive her for that. In fact, it was presumptuous in the extreme to expect any kind of sympathy from him at all.
Suddenly abhorring the rash and foolish impulse that had made her even think of reaching for the phone, she clamped the receiver sharply down again and fell back against the pillows, trembling. Perhaps, she thought dully, a shower might do something to restore some fragment of her sanity. A nice cold, invigorating shower to sluice away the gremlins that had gathered in her head.
Shakily she slid from the bed and pulled the flimsy, damp nightdress over her head. She glanced quickly at her watch on the bedside table before starting across the deep-pile carpet to the bathroom. It was half past three. Thank God she hadn't wakened him.
'You rang?'
Her heart lurched as she swung round to find him standing in the doorway watching her. She felt herself blush from the roots of her hair to the soles of her feet as his eyes travelled wantonly over her nakedness, pausing to linger provocatively on the full, high breasts, the slender waist, the silken mound between her thighs.
'Fausto, I—' She struggled for words to defend herself, to explain. But no words came.
Silently, he closed the door and came towards her, an expression of ironical amusement on his face. He was wearing only a short blue towelling robe, loosely tied about his hips. 'You wanted me for something?' he enquired, arching a mocking eyebrow as he spoke.
She backed away and hastily snatched the discarded nightdress from the floor, clutching it to her to conceal her nakedness. 'I couldn't sleep,' she protested hotly, knowing how feeble it must sound. 'I wanted to talk to you—that's all.' Her mouth felt dry and her heart was hammering uncomfortably against her ribs.
'To talk?' He surveyed her with a coolly disbelieving eye. 'And what particular subject matter did you have in mind?'
The tawny eyes flashed at him indignantly. 'Not what you seem to think,' she rebuked him sharply, then added on a note of appeasement, 'I wanted to apologise.' Perhaps now he would go.
But he didn't go—and, in spite of her embarrassment, Tanya didn't really want him to. 'You mean to tell me you were racked with such remorse that your apology couldn't wait till morning?' came the mildly taunting response. 'I find that somewhat difficult to believe, dear Tanya. Touching, of course, but hardly credible.'
He pulled her roughly to him then, and the blood was thundering in her veins as his mouth ground down on hers with bruising intensity, hungrily prising her lips apart. The nightgown was snatched from her flimsy grasp as his hands reached for her naked breasts, fingers probing the already hardening peaks in an urgent, almost pere
mptory caress. She half stumbled as he backed her towards the bed, and she wanted to cry out as she felt the robe slip from his shoulders to the floor. But she had no will to resist him, she acknowledged helplessly as the answering clamour of her own senses drowned her unspoken protests and she sank beneath him on to the tumbled bed.
'This is what you wanted, Tanya, isn't it?'
She could feel the weight of his body pressing down on hers, the sharp caress of his hair-roughened chest against her naked breasts, and she could not deny that what he said was true. She wanted him more than anything.
'Tell me you want me, Tanya,' he growled thickly against her ear, his hands moving downwards to caress her thighs. 'I can feel that you want me. Tell me that you do.'
In trembling response her arms wound tightly round his neck, as though she might never want to let him go, and the words fell like a sob from her lips when at last she whispered, 'I want you.'
His mouth closed down on hers again as he eased her aching thighs apart, but though she hungered to feel his body part of hers he did not enter her. Instead, he let his fingers play a sensual, tantalising magic on her, stroking, caressing, sending warm, pulsating tremors of pleasure coursing through her, making her gasp at the intimate mastery of his touch. Then her fingers knotted in his hair and her back arched to the gathering passion that suddenly exploded, sharp and sweet, throughout her entire being.
A moment later his arms released her and he rolled away from her on to his back. She felt suddenly cold, and reached out her hand to draw him back to her again, but Fausto had already risen from the bed. She watched in silent numbness as he pulled on his robe, then stooped to brush her lips briefly with his before quickly snapping off the bedside light. 'Sleep now, Tanya,' was all he said. And a moment later the door clicked softly as he left the room.
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