by Julia James
As he headed out into the London traffic the emerald glitter focussed only on the direction he was going.
Westwards.
It had been raining all night. Steady, relentless rain that had come down out of a leaden sky, turning the fields to a quagmire and the unmetalled lane up to the cottage to little better. Alexa was glad she didn’t have to get in any shopping for a while. She’d got into a routine since she’d been here, of driving into the local market town some ten miles away and picking up enough groceries and household items to keep her going for a week.
Her lifestyle was simple, pared to the bone. She was uninterested in anything else. So long as the stash of logs neatly stacked in the outhouse extension behind the cottage’s old-fashioned kitchen held out, so she could feed the log-burning stove in the sitting room that was the main source of heat besides the electric heater in the lean to, and so long as the electricity supply stayed operational, she was fine.
She wasn’t lonely.
She was used, after all, to a quiet lifestyle. Even in London she’d been content with her own company, never craving the bright lights. Occasional dinner parties, lunch out, the theatre, concerts and art exhibitions were all that she’d wanted. Had it not been for her work and for the rich treasures of art that London housed she’d have been happier in the country anyway.
Though she would not want to live anywhere as remote, as desolate as this isolated cottage. It was doubtless an idyllically pastoral hideway in the summer for holiday-makers, but it now dripped water from the eaves on her head when she stepped outside. From under the doors a perpetual draught whistled, echoing the wind wuthering in the chimney in the evenings. The windows rattled in the bedroom, and she was pretty certain that mice were scuttling in the cob walls.
Not that they bothered her either, provided they kept out of sight. Nor did the spiders that emerged from the wood basket, scuttling across the sitting room to take refuge under the sofa.
Unless the rain was a deluge, she made the effort to get outdoors every day, pulling on the pair of sturdy gumboots she’d bought in the market town, with a thick waxed jacket and a scarf to hold her hair down in the wind that blew in from the west, whatever the weather. She tramped down the muddy lanes and across fields, where incurious cattle continued to graze, and weather-beaten sheep lifted heads to stare unblinkingly at her as she crossed their domain.
The bleakness all around her echoed her own.
How long had she been here now? The days had merged one into another, and then into weeks. It must be four, five weeks already.
But time had no meaning for her. She was living in a world of her own, bare and bleak, but it was what she wanted. What she needed.
She crossed to the log-burner and crouched down to feed it. She’d mastered the art of keeping it alight, damping down all night, then building it up again in the morning. Now, by midday, the little sitting room was warm, despite the raw cold outside and the sodden, chill air.
Closing the door of the log-burner, she straightened. And turned her head sharply. She could hear a car approaching.
It was a car, definitely, not the tractor in which the local farmer sometimes lumbered past the cottage on his way to his fields. Warily, she crossed to the little deep inset window and peered out across the lane. A huge four-by-four was drawing up, its sides covered in newly spattered mud from the unmetalled lane, its wheels half a foot deep in a waterlogged rut.
Was this the letting agent? The local farmer? Someone who was completely lost down this dead-end lane? Someone was getting out. She heard a car door slam, but she couldn’t see from this side. She quit her post and headed for the front door, pulling it open.
And froze.
Disbelief drowned her. She could not be seeing what she was. She couldn’t…
It can’t be him—it can’t, it can’t! It’s impossible. Impossible! He can’t be here. He can’t, he can’t, he can’t!
But he was. Striding up to her.
Her vision swam, and she clutched at the doorframe to steady herself. He stopped in front of her. Tall. Overpowering.
Intimidating.
A shot of emotion bolted through her. It wasn’t fear—it couldn’t be fear, surely it couldn’t be fear? But it was strong, and sharp and it seized her lungs.
‘Alexa.’
It was all he said, standing there, confronting her.
‘How—how did you…?’ Her frail voice failed.
But he didn’t answer, merely steered past her, going into the cottage. Numbly she followed him. He seemed far too tall for its low-pitched confines. He strode into the living room, where the log-burner beckoned, and positioned himself in front of it, looking around the room. Then his gaze swept back to Alexa, standing frozen by the doorway. His eyes glittered.
‘Why?’
A single word, but to Alexa it held a universe of demand. Shock was still seizing her, but she’d gone into that ultra-calm that accompanied the condition. Everything seemed to have stopped around her.
‘Why?’ she echoed. Her voice seemed calm too. Preternaturally calm. ‘Why what, precisely, Guy?’
‘Why did you run?’ His voice was less controlled than hers. Deeper. Harsher. And his eyes still burned green.
Alexa tilted her head. Very slightly, but discernibly. ‘What did I have to stay for? Your…offer…didn’t appeal.’
His eyes narrowed, pinpointing her with laser focus. ‘No? That wasn’t the message I got when I had your body beneath mine. You gave me a quite different message then, Alexa.’ His voice caressed her like the tip of a whip.
She felt colour flare in her cheeks. ‘That shouldn’t have happened.’
‘But it did. It did, Alexa, and now I want an explanation of what the hell you think you’re doing!’
He was angry. He was actually angry. Alexa stared at him. Inside, she felt a leashed, powerful emotion at seeing him standing here, in the very place she had sought refuge from him. But she would not let it loose. She would keep it smothered. Controlled.
‘How did you find me?’ Her voice was clipped. ‘No one knows I’m here.’
‘Your letting agency knows. I found them through the tenants in your flat.’ His tone was offhand.
‘I instructed the agency to disclose this address to no one!’ she snapped. ‘How dared they tell you?’
His eyes glinted sardonically. ‘I have access to all their files. As of yesterday, the agency belongs to me.’
‘What?’
‘I bought the agency, Alexa. It was clearly the only way to find out where you were.’
She stared. ‘You bought the agency to get my address?’ There was incredulity in her voice. Then, with a lift of her chin, she bit out, ‘You wasted your money. I don’t know what you think you’re doing, but—’
‘I’m doing what I clearly ought to have done that night—making things clear to you!’
Her eyes flashed. ‘Oh, you made things very clear—don’t worry. I got the picture, I promise you. But like I said, I didn’t like the offer, so I turned it down. And now—’ her face hardened ‘—you can just get out—get out of my life!’
His expression changed. ‘You don’t mean that.’
It was the calm assurance with which he spoke that lit the touchpaper. Exploding her fury.
‘My God,’ she breathed, ‘you arrogant, conceited pig! Do you really think that just because you’re Guy de Rochemont you can behave any way you want? Do you think that just because like a complete idiot I fell back into bed with you I’ll do whatever you want? Do you? You think you can have an affair with me, and then calmly tell me one fine day that you’re getting married, and that’s it—and then months later turn up again and just pick up again where you left off, not worrying about anything as trivial as your fiancée? Do you? Because—’
‘Stop—Alexa, listen to me.’ His hand had flown up, as if to silence her passionate outpouring with an autocratic command.
‘What for?’ she bit back. ‘So you can tell me how
discreet you’re going to have to be when you pick up with me again?’
His eyes flashed. ‘I can’t help that, Alexa! Do you think I want to be clandestine in that way? I have no choice. And if you will simply listen to me, I will explain why—’
‘Oh, I’m sure you will!’ she thrust witheringly. ‘To you it’s all totally straightforward, isn’t it? Well, it is to me too. I don’t want anything more to do with you. There is nothing, nothing you can say that will change that. So go—go!’
She could feel her heart pounding in her chest, adrenaline pumping. It was unbearable—unbearable that Guy had walked in here. ‘Just go!’ she repeated, because he hadn’t budged at all, was still standing there, looking like the lord of the manor in the humble cottage of one of his countless peasants. Rich, arrogant, conceited—thinking he only had to find her to dictate his terms to her again. ‘Just go! You pushed your way in here. It’s unbelievable! You actually went and bought the letting agency just to find me. Your ego is monstrous—monstrous! Just because you’re Guy de Rochemont, born with a whole canteen of silver spoons in your mouth, and just because women swoon at your feet, you think you can do anything you want, get anyone you want. Any woman you want. Well, not me—not any more! There is nothing, nothing you can say to me that would ever change my mind.’
His face was stark as she threw her bitter words at him. Two white lines flared along his cheekbones.
‘Then I won’t waste my time talking.’
He was in front of her in an instant. He seized her arms, lowering over her. Panic, rage, fury, convulsed her. She threw herself backwards. ‘No! Not this time. Don’t touch me.’ She took a shuddering, shaking breath. ‘Whatever we had, it’s over. I’m not going there again. Ever. I don’t care,’ she spelt out, her words cutting like stone knives, hard and heavy, ‘whether you have a tame, cowed little fiancée in tow or not. I don’t want anything to do with you.’ Her face worked. ‘You were bad news right from the start, though I was too stupid to see it—and you’re bad news now. You always will be. I don’t want you. I don’t want anything to do with you. On any terms.’ She took one last shuddering breath. ‘Any terms at all.’
Her voice was flat. Final. She stared at him. She was back under control now. Back from that dangerous maelstrom of emotion. She’d mastered it, quelled it.
His face was stark, his jaw set like steel, the white lines along his tensed cheekbones etched like acid. His eyes were unreadable. Completely unreadable.
They always were. I never knew him. I loved him, but I never knew him. How stupid can a woman be, to love a man she doesn’t know? Who keeps her out of his real life…
Pain twisted inside her. All she’d ever had of him had been brief, bare snatches. Making do with scraps. No wonder he’d thought she would accept that vile adulterous offer of his. He’d had every expectation she would comply. After all, all he had to do was seduce her, just as he’d done that first time, and she would acquiesce in anything he wanted.
But no more. No more.
The desolation she was long familiar with swept through her. This had to end—now. His eyes were on her. Masked. Unreadable. The pain twisted again—the pain of seeing him, wanting so much to reach out and let him take her in his arms, let his mouth lower to hers, let him do what every cell in her body suddenly, flaringly, vividly, oh, so vividly, wanted him to do—let him make her forget everything that her head knew about him, everything that she must not forget. To melt her flesh and melt her mind, so that they were only bodies, bared and beautiful, twining together, made one together…
But they weren’t one. They were as separate from each other as it was possible to be.
‘Alexa—’
There was something in his voice. Something that she blocked out. Had to block out. Something dangerous.
‘No.’ She shook her head. ‘No—I’m not going there. This ends, Guy. Now.’
She moved away, making the move deliberate, controlled. Heading for the kitchen and the lean-to beyond.
‘At least your journey won’t be wasted. I’ve no idea whether you still want this, but I know I don’t.’ Her voice was cold—as cold as she could make it.
Her painting equipment was in the lean-to, and resting on a chair was the object she was going to fetch. He might as well take it now—it would save her having to courier it at some point, whenever the time came when she could no longer hole up here in the middle of nowhere. She’d wrapped it up already. She didn’t want to look at it. She’d finished it—the ability to do so had come to her, and she knew why it had, and hated herself—and it—for that very reason. But then, and only then, had it released her from its loathesome power….
She gathered the parcel up and turned, ready to take it out to him. But he had followed her. He wasn’t looking at her, however. Not even at the object she was holding. He was looking to the canvas on her easel.
She stilled.
His face was immobile. Silently she held out the wrapped painting in her hands to him. It was his portrait. The one she’d not been able to do. Now she had.
But not on its own. The portrait—quite deliberately and intentionally—was one of a pair.
Its companion was still on the easel. As finished as it would ever be.
His eyes were fixed on it, and in them Alexa saw a shadow flicker deep, deep within. Something moved in her, something even deeper inside her than the shadow in his eyes. Something even darker.
‘That one I’m keeping,’ she said. Her voice had no emotion in it. The emotion was all in the paint on the canvas.
In the twisted, demonic image of his face. The face of a man she had once loved.
But now only hated.
‘It’s to remind me of you,’ she said.
For a second, an instant, his eyes went to her. But there was nothing in them. Nothing she could discern. The mask over them was complete.
He took the wrapped portrait—the other one, the one that bore the face that Guy de Rochemont showed to the world. To the women in his bed.
Then, slowly, he inclined his head to her. ‘I won’t trouble you again, Alexa.’
There was nothing in his voice just as there was nothing in his eyes.
He turned and left. Walking out. Out of her life.
Leaving only the dark portrait to keep her company.
Slowly, haltingly, she went back into the sitting room. The fire was still blazing fiercely in the log-burner, and she could feel the warmth after the chill of the lean to.
But she was shivering all the same.
Guy drove. The long motorway back to London stretched before him, and the powerful car ate up the miles. On either side of the motorway the drear wintry landscape stretched, monotonous and rainswept. Grey and bleak.
Just like his life.
It stretched out ahead of him—swallowing him up.
He had seen hope—hope almost within reach, within his grasp and he’d stretched out his hands to take it.
Seize it.
Instead—
Instead it had been like a shot through the skull. Instant, total destruction. The work of a second. All it had taken for his eyes to light on, to focus on that square of canvas resting on the easel.
A mirror—a mirror held up to him.
In the few brief moments when his eyes had rested on it he had known—searingly, punishingly—that Alexa was gone. Out of his life.
She would never come back into it.
He pressed the accelerator, increasing the speed taking him away from her. Back to all that was left to him now.
His hands tightened on the steering wheel. Alexa was lost to him—he could not have her on any terms. She had shown him that in a square of canvas.
So now a heaviness settled over him, a weariness. All he could do was continue on the course he had resolved on. Ahead of him waited the girl he had said he would marry. He would do what he could for her.
What else was there for him to do? With Alexa gone—nothing.
Only Louisa
.
CHAPTER EIGHT
SPRING came. The days lengthened, the tender shoots of new growth peered between the blasted stalks of last year’s vegetation. In the garden and in the hedgerows primroses pushed their way out of the dark, confining earth, new leaves unfurled on bared branches. Life returned.
And Alexa returned to London.
But not to live. Only to pause, then pack again, and head to Heathrow. She’d booked a desert safari—a tough one. Bumping across endless dunes in a Jeep, sleeping in a bedroll underneath the stars which burned through the floor of heaven, revealing blisters of brightness, cracks showing the existence of a realm impossible to reach.
By day the sun burned down, hazing the horizon so that it was impossible to know if the Jeep were making progress or not. Yet each day they were a little further on. Each day a little further from their starting point.
They reached their goal—old ruins of an ancient city that had once been filled with living, breathing people, each one of them with their own life, their own aspirations, hopes and dreams, their own dreads and losses. Now only the desert dust blew through their emptied houses, along their deserted streets.
Alexa stopped and stared out over the desolation. Lines, bleak and spare, tolled in her head.
‘“For the world…hath really neither joy, nor love…nor peace, nor help for pain…”’
No, there was no help for pain, she knew. But the cruel-lest lines of the poem she could not say: ‘Ah, love, let us be true to one another…’
Could not even think them. Could only envy the poet who’d had someone to be true to, someone true to him.
Beyond the city’s ruins, the bare and boundless desert sands stretched far away, and she stood looking out over their loneliness, encircled in isolation, filled with a quiet despair.
And a new resolution. This could not go on—this endless desolation. It could not. Or it would destroy her. Somehow she had to find the strength to get past it. She had done it once before, when her parents had been killed, and she had found the strength to renew her life. Whatever it took, she had to do it again now.