Anton stepped forward, his eyes narrowed and shuttered, and, as she placed her hand in his, she felt an inexplicable little shiver race through her. His mouth tightened, as if her hesitation angered him, then he drew her further into the living-room and the ceremony began.
CHAPTER FOUR
Mr Fuller, a portly gentleman with a red face, conducted the marriage ceremony in a voice that communicated its brittleness to Laura's nerves. A wedding ring, a cold, hard seal of possession, was slipped on to her finger, giving the man who placed it there the unquestionable right to her body, and at this thought she only barely succeeded in suppressing a shudder when Anton lowered his proud head to touch her lips briefly with his own when Mr Fuller made the customary suggestion that the groom should kiss the bride.
Champagne corks popped loudly, and glasses were filled in order to toast their happiness, but Laura felt a numbness shifting over her as if she had transgressed beyond the point of fear to a neutral plane where nothing, and no one, could touch her. The time to depart came all too soon. Graham and Gina kissed her as if they had known her for years, but it was Sally's clinging arms about her neck that registered most, and Laura caught her close in a rush of sudden warmth until Anton announced impatiently that it was time they left.
The white Jaguar purred down the long avenue of cypress trees, but, when Anton slowed down at the gate, a young man, camera in hand, leapt from the shrubbery. A light flashed blindingly, and Anton's muttered 'Damn!' seemed to explode in her ears. The next instant she was thrown back against the seat as he put his foot down on the accelerator and swung the car into the road with a violence that made the tyres squeal. The Jaguar seemed to thrive on this unexpected burst of speed, but Laura, who had never been able to see the sense in risking one's life in this manner, was pale and shaken when Anton finally slowed down at the intersection several kilometres from Bellavista.
'Sorry about that,' he said abruptly, affording her just the briefest glance before they continued their journey at a more acceptable speed.
They arrived early enough at The Strand to pick up a few supplies, and then the final six-kilometre stretch to Gordon's Bay was accomplished within a matter of minutes.
The cottage was not exactly what Laura had expected, but it was nevertheless pleasing. An ivy creeper trailed along the whitewashed walls, and a small verandah offered an excellent view of the beach. The interior was sparsely, yet comfortably furnished, and while Anton carried in their supplies and suitcases, Laura opened the windows to alleviate the musty smell which had resulted from the cottage being shut up for a length of time.
It was an ideal retreat, she realised, for someone like Anton who obviously felt the need occasionally to escape from the pressure of his work.
Laura wandered into the first of the two bedrooms for a second time since her arrival, and her eyes inevitably strayed once more towards the old-fashioned four-poster bed. She swallowed convulsively, and fear returned with an intensity that forged a paralysing numbness into her limbs. With no chair available, she lowered herself gingerly on to the bed, and absently prodded the mattress.
'The springs don't creak,' a mocking voice informed her and, mortified, she leapt to her feet to see Anton placing their suitcases at the foot of the bed. 'You'll have to make up the bed yourself,' he added as he straightened. 'You'll find whatever you require in the passage cupboard.'
The sounds of the sea filtered pleasantly into the room through the open window, but Laura was aware of nothing else except her growing fear of this man who was now her husband. She must have been mad to contemplate a marriage such as this, she thought frantically as she met the direct gaze of those steel-grey eyes. There was no tender-ness in his glance for the woman he had married that afternoon, only the cold, calculating hardness of a man summing up a newly acquired possession, and assessing its worth.
'Anton, would you—'
'Would I what?' he demanded when she faltered helplessly.
'Give me a little time,' she pleaded in a choked voice. 'Please?'
'How much time do you need?' he asked, his eyebrows rising sharply above those cold, heavy-lidded eyes. 'A month? A year, perhaps? Or do you need the rest of our lives?'
She shook her head and swallowed nervously. 'Only until we know each other a little better. Surely that's not asking too much?'
'I mean our marriage to start as I intend it to continue.'
'But, Anton—'
'No!' he interrupted harshly, closing the gap between them with one long, lithe stride. His hands were heavy on her shoulders, and her breathing felt oddly restricted when she felt his thumbs probing the sensitive hollows above her collarbone. 'It's a hurdle that must be crossed, Laura, and you won't find me an insensitive lover.'
'Don't!' she begged, suppressing a shudder at the intolerable thought of being possessed by him, but, at the same time, those caressing thumbs were sending a scintillating warmth flowing along her veins which was not entirely unpleasant.
'I'm your husband, Laura,' he was saying, 'and before this day has passed I'm going to be your lover.'
'No!'
'Accept it,' he stated harshly and emphatically, 'because that's how it will be.'
'You're inhuman!' she accused in a choked voice.
'Not inhuman,' he corrected, releasing her abruptly. 'Just practical.'
He strode from the room, leaving her alone and more afraid than she had ever been before. There was no escape from this nightmare she had plunged herself into, and she would just have to see it through to the bitter end.
She collected the necessary linen from the cupboard in the passage, but hysterical laughter threatened to engulf her while she was making the bed. She felt like a condemned prisoner erecting her own scaffold before the hanging was to take place, and there was abject terror in her eyes when she eventually straightened from her task. She stared down at the wide bed, saw it as the battleground where she would suffer her most humiliating defeat, and wished suddenly that she were dead.
She prepared a meal for them that evening in the small kitchen, but found herself incapable of eating more than a mouthful, and when Anton finally suggested a walk on the beach, she jumped at the opportunity to delay the inevitable moment when she would be alone with him in the bedroom they were to share.
She had changed into a cotton frock and low-heeled sandals before dinner, but as they crossed the uneven sand Anton's hand was beneath her elbow, his touch warm, firm, and disturbing.
Stars clustered like diamonds in the night sky, and the ocean lay like a shimmering sheet of silver in the moonlight, but the beauty of it all escaped her as she walked stiffly at Anton's side, listening distractedly while he related to her a little of the history of Gordon's Bay. She heard nothing, however, beyond the fact that a Colonel Gordon of the Dutch East India Company had given his name to the bay when he had explored the southern coastline of Africa in 1778.
Anton's mocking, 'I don't seem to be making much impression as a tourist guide,' finally penetrated her panic-filled thoughts, and she blessed the darkness for hiding her discomfiture.
'I'm sorry,' she murmured apologetically.
'Shall we return to the cottage?'
'No! Not yet!' she wanted to cry out, but, with a submissiveness born of fear, she murmured, 'If you like.'
They strolled back to the cottage in silence, but it felt to Laura as if every step brought her closer to her doom, and she shivered uncontrollably when they finally entered the cottage and closed the door behind them.
Anton snapped on the light, but when her wide, frightened eyes looked up into his, he said harshly, 'I'll take another turn about the place before locking up.'
The outer door closed behind him with a decisive 'click' that made her flinch, but she felt a certain measure of relief as she hurriedly collected her things from the bedroom before going along to the bathroom at the end of the passage. She took her time bathing, but her heart lurched uncomfortably when she returned to the room and found Anton standi
ng at the window with his back towards her. Her trembling hand automatically sought the wide neck-opening of her gown when he turned, but he merely stalked past her, removed his towelling robe off the hook behind the door where she had placed it, and continued on down the passage towards the bathroom.
She heard him in the shower while she removed the pins from her hair to let it cascade down on to her shoulders and, picking up her brush, she brushed her hair with long, firm strokes. The blessed normality of this nightly ritual seemed to steady her nerves temporarily, but, at the sound of the bathroom door opening, she realised that she was still as tightly strung as a bow, and ready to snap at the merest touch.
She lowered the brush on to the dresser as Anton entered the room, and her throat felt choked and dry when she turned to face him. His hair was damp from his shower, and as her stricken glance swept down to his bare feet, she felt terrifyingly certain that his muscular body was clad in nothing except that dark-blue towelling robe which left a large section of his deeply-tanned chest bare. She stared fixedly at the short dark hair curling against his skin, but when he came towards her she backed away instinctively, her heart leaping into her throat.
He paused abruptly, and his autocratic features contorted with something close to rage. 'For God's sake, don't look at me like that!'
'How do you expect me to look at you?' she demanded, forcing the words past the paralysing grip which fear had on her throat.
'I'm not a monster, Laura.'
'What you're expecting of me is monstrous,' she countered swiftly, her nervous fingers automatically tightening the belt of her gown.
'What are you afraid of, Laura?' His compelling eyes held hers captive as he lessened the space between them, and she stared back hypnotically. 'Are you afraid of the possibility that you might enjoy being made love to?'
'I shall hate every minute of it,' she hissed at him, but a hateful smile curved his mouth when he observed her heightened colour. 'We shall see about that.'
She stood immobile, caught between a weird kind of fascination and horror as he brushed aside her hands to undo the belt of her gown before sliding it from her shoulders to lie at her feet. The transparency of her nightdress offered her very little protection from the intrusion of his smouldering glance and, heated with embarrassment, she cried out hoarsely, 'You can't do this to me!'
His reply was to pull her roughly against him, and with his hand in her trailing hair, he jerked her head back to expose her throat. His face became a twisted blur when her eyes filled with tears, then he lowered his head, and his lips trailed fire across her skin before that hard mouth fastened on to hers.
Laura fought against him with every ounce of strength she possessed, but the all-consuming passion of his kiss drained her of her resistance, and left her humiliatingly supine in his arms as he carried her across the room and lowered her on to the bed. His mouth never left hers as he snapped off the light to plunge the room into merciful darkness, then she felt him shrug himself out of his robe, but when he lay down beside her, her alarming suspicions were confirmed. There was nothing between them save the fragile thinness of her nightdress, and this, too, he was removing with a dexterity born of experience.
Her dulled mind came alive once more to what was happening, and her fear returned with every thundering beat of her heart until, submerged in a well of panic, she fought him off like someone demented, but there was no escape from the brute strength of a man intent upon satisfying his desire.
'Stop fighting me, Laura,' he ordered harshly, placing a muscled leg across her thighs to pin her thrashing body to the bed.
She flung every insult at him that she could think of, but he held her firmly until, exhausted, she had no strength left to fight off the sensuality of his lips and hands invading her body with an intimacy which had, till that moment, been forbidden to other men, and her humiliation increased rapidly when she found that he was drawing an unwilling response from her.
She felt his weight above her, and her nails bit into the hard flesh of his shoulders as her body grew taut with resentment and fear. 'Please! I can't! Please, Anton!'
'Relax, dammit, or you're going to get hurt!' he warned thickly, but her tension merely increased with the realisation of what was about to happen, and the despairing knowledge that there was nothing she could do to ward it off.
Her cry of pain was stifled moments later beneath his lips when he took possession of her. Her body arched convulsively, giving encouragement where none was intended, and then she was conscious of nothing except the hardness of his thrusting body, and a numbness that left her devoid of all feeling.
When Anton finally rolled away from her, she lay for a long time staring into the darkness, dry-eyed and disillusioned. If this was what making love was all about, then she could do very nicely without it in future, she decided unhappily.
Anton stirred beside her. 'It wasn't my intention to hurt you, Laura, but you have only yourself to blame for what happened.'
'I hate you!' she hissed at him, and all the anger and humiliation she had suffered at his hands was locked up in those three words.
'Good,' he retaliated harshly. 'Hate from you is preferable to indifference, and I don't ever want my intelligence insulted by the use of the word "love" between us.'
'Love is a word you'll never hear from me, Anton DeVere, have no fear of that!'
'I'm glad we understand each other,' he said abruptly and, turning over on to his side, he promptly went to sleep.
She drew the sheets closer about her, and stared at his broad back while she tried to unravel her puzzling thoughts. They had just made the word 'love' taboo between them, and although she felt certain that she could never love him, it left her with a feeling of inexplicable sadness. What had happened, she wondered, that he should have turned his back so completely on love? Was it a defensive attitude against being hurt again, or did he simply have no love to give?
The latter seemed the most probable, but she did not dwell on the thought for long, for the sound of the surf lulled her into a deep but troubled sleep, and she became enmeshed in dreams fraught with sinister encounters. She finally sought refuge in the shelter of protective arms; arms that offered unquestionable safety and security and, sighing contentedly, she slept on dreamlessly until the first light of dawn stretched rosy fingers across the sky.
She stirred, opening her eyes lazily and, to her dismay, discovered that she had been lying in Anton's arm with her head pillowed on his shoulder. For one paralysing moment she could not recall what she was doing there, then the memory of her pain and disillusionment returned, and with it came the humiliating realisation that it had been his arms in which she had sought refuge from her dreams.
She had to get away, she thought frantically. She could not face him so soon after what had happened last night, but as she shifted her position carefully, trying not to wake him, a heavy arm was flung about her waist, and a mocking voice demanded in her ear, 'What's the rush?'
Her heart leapt wildly into her throat, almost choking off the sound of her voice as she said, 'I want to get dressed.'
His lips brushed against her ear, sending a little shiver through her that was intensified when his hand came up to clasp her breast possessively. 'I think I like you better as you are.'
'Go to hell!' she cried angrily, fighting off his lips and hands, and the unfamiliar sensations they aroused.
'It's heaven I shall be going to, Laura,' he laughed softly against her lips as he pinned her flailing arms at her sides, 'and this time I intend taking you there with me.'
'No… don't!' she begged frantically, her body taut at the suggestion of renewed pain, then her lips were parted beneath the bruising pressure of his hard mouth.
A blanket of fear enveloped her mind, and it was some time before she made the startling discovery that his caressing hands were having a soothing effect on her, and, as the tension eased from her body, her skin began to tingle as if a thousand little nerves had suddenly come alive to
his touch. He continued to caress her, taking his time until his experience must have told him of her receptiveness, then his lips and hands sought intimacies she no longer had the strength or the desire to refuse. He was arousing emotions within her which she had never imagined existed, and this time, when he took possession of her, she found it so intensely pleasurable that she clung to him in unashamed and rapturous delight, giving of herself freely until she was plummeted into a vortex of ecstatic fulfilment.
Spent, they lay beside each other, and for a time Laura was conscious of nothing except the thudding of her heart and an exquisite feeling of well-feeing, then Anton spoiled it all by raising himself up on one elbow to say tauntingly, 'I promised you a glimpse of heaven, didn't I?'
His mocking reference to the intimacy they had shared seemed to belittle an experience which she had considered almost sacred, and as she came down to earth with a thud, she heard herself ask coldly, 'Do you usually gloat over your triumphs in this manner?'
His faintly cynical smile deepened. 'If I'm gloating, then it's because I've made an intriguing discovery about you.'
'Have you?' she asked warily, drawing the sheets up higher in order to hide her nakedness from his invading eyes, but her action merely evoked his mocking laughter, and made her cheeks flare hotly with embarrassment.
'I've discovered that beneath that cool exterior of yours there lurks a passionate woman,' he told her, lowering his lips to her exposed throat where a pulse leapt in response to his touch. 'I think I'm going to enjoy being married to you, and teaching you all there is to know about the art of making love.'
Her body stiffened with distaste. 'Your experience is vast, no doubt?'
'I'm thirty-nine, Laura,' he stated calmly as he raised his head, and his mocking glance seared through her like a heated blade as he added, 'Had I been an inexperienced youth you wouldn't have found my lovemaking so enjoyable.'
Season of Shadows Page 6