Angel of Darkness

by Lynne Graham

  A loud knock sounded on the door. Angelo sprang off the bed, drove an unsteady hand through his wildly tousled black hair and shot Kelda a glittering glance of mingled frustration and grudging amusement.

  Kelda was stricken when Daisy and Tomaso strolled in.

  Her stepfather dealt both of them a satiric smile. ‘I assume that congratulations are in order.’

  ‘I should think so too,’ Daisy teased.

  Kelda could feel a painful flush engulfing her skin. Evidently the knock that had been heard had not been the first interruption. She remembered her stepfather saying that he wouldn’t trust either of them in the same room for an hour. She remembered the last time they had been surprised on a bed. She burned hotter than ever.

  ‘Congratulations would be premature,’ Angelo delivered lazily.

  ‘Kelda!’ Her mother exclaimed reproachfully.

  ‘It’s my decision.’ Embarrassed as she was, Kelda was still strong enough not to be browbeaten by opinion into a corner.

  ‘I want to talk to Kelda alone,’ Daisy asserted sharply.

  ‘I don’t think that would be a good idea,’ Angelo intervened on her behalf, startling her.

  The visit was short and sweet. Daisy, whose quiet temperament was only rarely stirred to anger, waited until Angelo had walked out of the door with his father before darting back and positively hissing, ‘In my day, you married a man you couldn’t keep your hands off...at least if you were lucky enough to be free! You’re cutting off your nose to spite your face. I’m sorry but I have to say it. If I don’t, who else will?’

  ‘Me?’

  Kelda jerked and her mother spun in dismay. Angelo cast them both a slow, splintering smile that did something utterly unforgivable to Kelda’s already shaken composure. Daisy reddened and went into retreat.

  Angelo studied Kelda from the foot of the bed. ‘I’ll see you tomorrow.’

  ‘There’s no point. I don’t want you visiting me.’

  When the door closed behind him, she felt incredibly, childishly lonely. She lay back and the baby chose that moment to kick and squirm. She smoothed a possessive and tender hand over her stomach. It was so stupid to love Angelo! If it had been within her power, she would have torn that love out brutally by the roots. She had tried to do that in recent months, had thought she was on the road to recovery...had learnt her mistake all over again.

  Angelo was ruthlessly set on building bridges to pave the bridal path, but she couldn’t marry him. He didn’t seem to realise that no woman with any pride wanted to be married solely because an unplanned baby was on the way. Times had changed since her mother’s day. Women didn’t have to be forced into marriage to save their reputations any more.

  Tomaso had undoubtedly made Angelo feel that he had to marry her. That was so degrading. She didn’t need that pressure. She resented Angelo for giving way to such old-fashioned attitudes but, dismayingly, she suddenly realised that she would resent him even more if he ever chose to marry anyone else. And that was far from a logical attitude considering that she was not prepared to marry him herself.

  She found her thoughts returning several times over to something that her mother had said. One of those careless statements which people made in temper without realising how much they were revealing. Daisy had said that in her day you married a man you couldn’t keep your hands off...at least if you were lucky enough to be free!

  There had been a bitter edge to that assurance. Kelda was shaken when she realised what she had found so disturbing about those words. They were her mother’s acknowledgement that once she had been attracted to someone while she was married. Or had they been an acknowledgement of something more than mere attraction? Kelda frowned, angry with herself for thinking in such a way of her own mother. Her mother had adored her father, absolutely adored him, she reminded herself.

  Angelo arrived the next day with magazines, books and two boxed sets of nightwear. ‘You have no right to buy me that sort of stuff,’ she objected.

  ‘Relax...Harrods maternity department inspired me with no improper thoughts.’

  ‘Maternity department?’

  ‘I hate to tell you this, but you wouldn’t make it into anything that didn’t come from that department.’

  She saw the size on the uppermost box and almost choked on her chagrin. It would have fitted an elephant, never mind a pregnant size eight. Her bottom lip wobbled. Her throat tightened. She studied her stomach with loathing and burst into floods of tears. ‘Go away and leave me alone!’ she sobbed.

  ‘What did I say?’ Angelo endeavoured to put his arms round her but she pulled away.

  ‘Nothing!’

  He got a nurse. The nurse came in to soothe, couldn’t resist trying to interest her in the contents of the boxes and lifted out the enormous négligé set. ‘Is this for you?’ she demanded in a choked voice and went off into gales of laughter. ‘Didn’t anyone tell him that you buy the same size in maternity wear as you wore before you expanded?’

  Kelda sat up and blew her nose. ‘It would fit an elephant.’

  ‘It would fit two elephants!’ She called in two of the other nurses. Kelda’s bed was swiftly surrounded by giggling women, bonded by the joy of sheer male ignorance. Kelda began laughing so hard it hurt. She was picturing Angelo in the maternity department, Angelo, who was quite incapable of acknowledging ignorance in any form.

  Daisy offered to change them that afternoon. Kelda thought Angelo might visit her again in the evening. He didn’t. She thought he might phone. He didn’t. Since she had taken the trouble to put on one of the nightdresses, a now correctly sized version courtesy of her mother, she was irritated. She had wanted to share the joke with him. That was all, she told herself, watching the television with flat, disappointed eyes.

  She waited for him in the morning. He didn’t show. When Tomaso and Daisy rolled up, she was tempted to ask where he was but she fought the temptation. She didn’t want to risk rousing the suspicion that she cared whether he came to visit or not. She didn’t care. It was just that lying flat on her back with very little exercise was boring and, whatever other faults Angelo had, being boring was not one of them.

  She drifted off into a doze at about ten and then a slight sound awakened her. Angelo was poised at the foot of the bed in a dinner jacket and bow-tie. Oddly enough, the sight was like a red rag to a bull. Kelda sat up. ‘Where the hell have you been?’ she demanded fiercely.

  ‘You missed me...you noticed I wasn’t there?’ Angelo launched a sizzlingly provocative smile at her, dark eyes glinting like polished jet over her angry face.

  ‘I did not miss you!’

  ‘Obviously you did.’

  ‘I’m stuck in here while you’re out there enjoying yourself,’ Kelda slung mutinously. ‘That makes me sick!’

  ‘My visit upset you so much yesterday, I decided to give you some space,’ Angelo revealed flatly.

  ‘Where were you tonight?’ She had to know. She couldn’t get past that raging need to know where he had been and who he had been with.

  ‘At a charity dinner, full of long overblown speeches and pompous old windbags.’

  Unexpectedly, she laughed. She told him about the mistake he had made with the lingerie. It was almost the first time she had ever seen Angelo look embarrassed. Suddenly uneasy with the sense of intimacy she was experiencing, she fell silent.

  ‘You’re doing it again...shutting me out,’ he breathed with a raw edge to his voice. ‘I hate it when you do that.’

  ‘I keep on waiting for you to turn on me again.’ She had not meant to be that honest but somehow the admission slid out.

  He tensed, paled, dark eyes veiling as he paced restively across the room. ‘It’s taken me a long time but believe me...I’ve changed. Unfortunately for you, my misconceptions about your temperament were set in concrete that night six years ago—’

  Kelda froze in dismay. ‘I don’t want to talk about that.’

  ‘You had to almost die before I could be forced
into facing the truth,’ Angelo vented harshly. ‘I was afraid of finding myself in a relationship which I couldn’t control. I know what that did to my father. I was determined that no woman would do to me what my mother did to him. It was easier to walk away from you than stay...’

  Kelda tore her eyes from his clenched profile, knowing what that confession of vulnerability must have cost him.

  ‘Six years ago, I lost control,’ he admitted fiercely. ‘I overreacted that night. I was hardly an unprejudiced bystander. Even had you been making love with that boy, you would only have been doing what teenagers do, given the opportunity. No, I was brutal with you because I wanted you for myself and the sight of you with that boy drove me crazy—’

  ‘Angelo—’

  He cut in on her. ‘I was almost twenty-six and you were eighteen. It was almost a year since I had seen you. I had deliberately stayed away. And I came home with such high hopes—’

  ‘What kind of hopes?’ She was remembering the way he had looked at her before that ghastly party, his unfamiliar warmth...the compliment.

  ‘I thought that finally I might have a chance with you. Until then, I had had to repress everything I felt around you. Telling myself that I would marry you didn’t make me any less ashamed of feeling like that. If you hadn’t been so naïve, you would have guessed why I never, ever touched you in any way. You would have questioned the extent of my interest in your education and the amount of freedom you were allowed.’

  ‘I didn’t,’ she whispered dazedly.

  ‘I have a jealous, possessive streak a mile wide,’ Angelo admitted grimly. ‘Every time you went out of the door, I went through hell. I knew you ought to have all the normal adolescent experiences but I didn’t want you to have them. That’s why I had to leave for that year but that night, seeing you with that boy...I went off at the deep end. And now I have to live with the knowledge that you were almost raped. I not only added to your distress by my accusations but also gave way to my own animal instincts in a way which I deeply regret.’

  Jealousy had been the source of his incomprehension that night. She saw that now so clearly. Almost immediately her memories of those fevered minutes in his arms were curiously cleansed of all humiliation and embarrassment. If she had been out of control, Angelo had been as well.

  ‘I went to your room to make you listen to the truth, but somehow...’ Kelda hesitated awkwardly.

  ‘I opened my eyes and you were there. I thought you had come to me. I didn’t remember what had happened earlier until afterwards...and then I believed that you had guessed how I felt and were taunting me,’ he breathed savagely. ‘But I should never have touched you. I had no excuse.’

  Kelda plucked at the sheet. ‘I enjoyed it. That devastated me.’

  ‘Do you still feel that I’m about to turn on you?’

  She didn’t. But she didn’t say so. Angelo had changed and she could not understand or even quite accept that Angelo could so suddenly revise his opinion of her. He had given her a completely clean sheet. A mean, jealous streak a mile wide, yes, well, she pondered helplessly, he hadn’t been exaggerating on that count. She discovered that she had forgiven him for that night six years ago and that shook her.

  But there was something so incredibly appealing about his acknowledgement about how he had felt about her then. True, it had only been rampant sexual desire but he had not intended to take advantage of her innocence. And the more he reminded her of that physical obsession, the more secretively secure she felt. In one sense, Angelo belonged to her. For more than six years, Angelo had continued to desire her. And for more than six years, Angelo, being Angelo, must have fought that hunger to the last ditch...yet still it persisted.

  ‘I won’t misjudge you again. I can safely promise you that.’ Strong resolve hardened his dark features. ‘You say you won’t marry me. But have you thought about the future? Whether you like it or not, we’ll have a child we have to share within a few weeks...’

  Kelda swallowed with difficulty. ‘Share?’

  ‘Naturally I will expect to spend time with our child. Even the law would grant me visitation rights, but I doubt if either one of us wants or sees the need for legal intervention,’ Angelo stated softly. ‘The very existence of that child means that I will be a part of your life for years to come.’

  Kelda studied her tightly linked hands. That aspect of the future hadn’t occurred to her. Angelo was not disclaiming responsibility. Angelo was telling her up-front that he intended to be there in their lives. Shakenly, she attempted to envisage a purely platonic and civilised relationship with Angelo, the eventual introduction of his lovers into their child’s life. Thousands of women had to endure similar situations for the sake of their children’s security. But she loved Angelo. And Angelo had given her a choice. He had asked her to marry him.

  ‘Couldn’t you try being married to me?’ Angelo proffered smoothly. ‘Couldn’t we at least give marriage a chance?’

  ‘I don’t want to get married because our parents think we should!’ Kelda said.

  Incredulity blazed in his eyes. ‘What the hell do they have to do with it?’ he demanded.

  Kelda flinched. ‘They want—’

  ‘I’m talking about what I want,’ Angelo emphasised drily. ‘And I am long past the age of being influenced by what my father wants. Six years ago, he wanted me to marry you and I refused—’

  ‘That night...’ she registered with sudden understanding.

  ‘Yes. All would have been instantly forgiven had I been willing to do what he saw as the “decent thing”,’ Angelo told her. ‘But nobody makes me do anything I don’t want to do.’

  The assurance hung there in the throbbing silence.

  ‘It wouldn’t work,’ she said tautly.

  ‘How can you say that without giving it a chance?’

  ‘Well, I can’t, but how could it?’

  ‘That doesn’t mean we can’t try. What does trying cost you?’

  More pain, more hurt, but would it be any worse than watching him with other women, being forced to share her child with him whenever he made that demand? Wasn’t she simply running scared? Riven with raw tension and uncertainty, she cast him an involuntary glance and surprised the same tension in him. He wanted her and he wanted the baby. Marriages had survived on considerably less.

  ‘I am not going to beg,’ Angelo slung at her.

  ‘I’ll marry you.’ The instant she surrendered, doubts rushed in and her brow furrowed with anxious lines. ‘After the baby’s born—’

  Angelo threw her a scorching look of anger. ‘No!’

  ‘Why not?’

  ‘I’m not prepared to wait. You might change your mind.’

  Her teeth ground together but she was very tired. Angelo, she registered, had a lot in common with water dripping on stone. He was incredibly persistent. She rested her head back. ‘OK,’ she muttered finally.

  It was three weeks before Kelda was discharged from hospital. Her blood-pressure had for a time given cause for concern. Forty-eight hours after Tomaso and Daisy took her home with them, Angelo and Kelda were married in the small local church with only family present.

  She found the ceremony curiously unreal. Once she had agreed to marry him, Angelo had visited her every day. He had done all the things expected of him. He had brought her gifts, filled her room with flowers and entertained her when her spirits were low. But in spite of that she felt as though he had distanced himself from her. There were no intimacies, no kisses, no hot looks. Angelo held himself aloof and Kelda, ever sensitive to the threat of rejection, was incapable of attempting to bridge the gulf opening up between them.

  On their wedding day, she realised that she couldn’t see her feet any more, but she told herself bracingly that that scarcely mattered. Angelo was clearly not attracted to very pregnant women. She could accept that, she could live with that, she assured herself. But the awareness that her sole attraction for Angelo was physical and that that sole attraction had vanished
along with her feet and her once tiny waist made her feel more insecure than ever.

  She wanted to shrink behind Angelo when they emerged from the church and discovered a barrage of cameras awaiting them. The media had finally found out about them and there was no greater joy for a tabloid than to publish pictures of a groom with an eight-month-pregnant bride, especially when the groom had been very publically romancing other women for most of that same pregnancy.

  Kelda was trembling when they drove off in a chauffeur-driven limo. For the first time in her life she had felt threatened by a camera lens. Angelo covered her tightly gripped hands soothingly. ‘A five-day wonder...they’ll forget about us soon enough.’

  But Kelda was too proud to forget how their marriage must look to outsiders. A shotgun wedding. She was annoyed that she had let Angelo pressure her into marrying him before the baby was born. Instinct told her that she would not have felt so threatened by the cameras had she regained her once lithe shape instead of resembling a barrage balloon in a horribly cutesy little maternity suit.

  ‘Do you think so?’ she breathed sharply. ‘You’ve married down, not up. Working class girl makes good. The Press like that.’

  ‘I rather think that I’m the one who has...made good,’ Angelo countered.

  Her teeth clenched. What did you do with a male who set your teeth on edge with exquisite courtesy and then refused to fight? Literally she gnashed her teeth.

  ‘I hope you like Hedley Court.’

  Angelo owned an Elizabethan manor. She had never seen it. All that had struck her about her future home was that it lay almost a hundred miles from London where Angelo necessarily spent the greater part of his time. He had an apartment in town. It would be very convenient for him, wouldn’t it? A wife and a child a safe hundred miles away? Well if Angelo fondly imagined that he was going to turn her into a country weekend wife, who never saw him between Monday and Friday, he was in for a surprise.