Winter Sunlight

by Susan Alexander

  Hurriedly she turned away.

  In her room the curtains had not been drawn and she stayed in the dark, depression now weighing heavily on her spirits. She must pack, she thought wearily, but didn't move.

  A tingling down her back suddenly alerted her. Swinging round, she saw a dark shape on the bed and lunged for the light as fear shivered down her spine.

  Stretched out on the bed, elegantly casual and supremely comfortable, was the master of the house.

  CHAPTER ELEVEN

  Sophie's breath caught in her throat and she stared at Max in disbelief.

  'You've been a long time,' he said mildly, and swung himself off the bed.

  'What are you doing here?' she demanded.

  'I've come to talk to you,' he replied calmly, turning on the overhead light. 'Our attempts at private conversation tend to be rather fraught, don't they?'

  'I'm not interested in anything you have to say,' said Sophie coldly. 'Please go.'

  'There are things I have to tell you and I'm not leaving till they're said.'

  'You're very good at making threats in bedrooms, aren't you?' she demanded angrily.

  'What a lovely thought,' he drawled suggestively, and watched lazily as the colour rose to her face. 'You did rather lay yourself open to that, didn't you?'

  'I'm not in the mood for humour.'

  'I can see that. What's the matter, Sophie?' he asked quietly. 'Something's upset you. You were brittle as glass at dinner.'

  'I don't plan to talk—or listen—to you ever again.'

  'What's that supposed to mean?' He advanced on her.

  'And don't touch me!' she screamed at him in genuine fear.

  'Stop it,' he commanded, and took hold of her arms. 'Simmer down!'

  'Take your hands off me, damn you!' she cried and lifted her hand to strike him hard across the cheek.

  'You're hysterical,' Max said calmly, and hit her back.

  Raising one hand to her stinging cheek, her fury boiled over.

  'How dare you hit me, you arrogant bully? So you're a brute as well as…' She tailed off at the sight of his face.

  'As what?' he demanded with icy rage.

  'A liar and a cheat!' she spat at him.

  At that he let her go, almost pushing her away from him and she collapsed awkwardly into a chair behind her. Looking up, she recognised that she'd gone too far. His face was grim, anger blazing in his eyes.

  'Well,' he demanded coldly, 'are you going to explain that accusation?'

  She didn't answer, and he turned his back and walked over to the window.

  'So I'm a liar and a cheat,' he said heavily, 'but I'm not to be told why.' His shoulders were hunched, his head lowered. 'Something has upset you badly,' he said unexpectedly. 'I've never seen you erupt into fury and hysteria. I wish I knew who or what did that to you.'

  Almost, Sophie softened. The quiet tone, the note of concern and gentleness had her melting again.

  'Whatever it is,' Max went on evenly, 'perhaps it will help if I give you my news. I've been looking forward to it all day.'

  He turned back to her and she noticed the tiredness in his face. It was etched in deep lines below his eyes which were now oddly glazed with pain. He dropped into a chair, his body slumped in weariness.

  'I've spent the last four days in England.'

  'Your business affairs are nothing to do with me,' she said coldly.

  'Will you listen to me, woman?' he growled at her. 'I went to the convent.'

  'Convent?' she echoed.

  'Yes, convent. Where you were born—remember?'

  'Oh.' She nodded, wondering what this was all about.

  He leaned back in the chair.

  'I discovered that the nun who'd delivered you died two years ago, and the Mother Superior is not the one who was there when you were born.' He sighed. 'So I decided to find the doctor who'd attended your mother. He'd left the neighbourhood, but I managed to trace him. He remembered your mother, but couldn't tell me anything. She was dying by the time he saw her and there was little he could do.'

  He raised a hand to his neck, rubbing the tired muscles.

  'So I followed a hunch I'd had while you were telling me the story.' He leaned forward. 'If you think about it, most women in your mother's condition would have made for the nearest hospital. But she didn't. She chose a convent to give birth, and I decided only one person could tell me why.'

  'Who?' Sophie asked eagerly, completely caught up in what he was telling her.

  'Assuming she was a Catholic, who was the one person she would demand to see before she died?'

  'A priest,' Sophie breathed.

  'Precisely.' He smiled faintly. 'It took me two days to track him down, but he did remember her. He'd been a young man at the time and had tried hard to persuade her to put the father's name on the certificate. But she refused. It took some time to get him to tell me the rest, but in the end he agreed to answer some of my questions because they applied to facts she had told him before her final Confession.' He raised his eyes to her face. 'I'm sorry to have to tell you your father died before you were born,' he said quietly. 'But it seems your parents were probably married. Both families disapproved of the match and they eloped. How your father died the priest didn't know. What he did tell me was that your mother was very young—under eighteen, he judged.' He paused. 'But the most important thing of all was that your mother never mentioned your father's illness. Neither the doctor nor the priest knew anything about it, and both men were quite certain they would have remembered.' He looked searchingly across at her. 'I think the nun made it up.'

  'But why?' Sophie whispered.

  'Who knows?' He shrugged. 'She may have thought your mother was unmarried and wanted to frighten you, to stop you going the same way. We'll never know for sure. In any case, I'd like to start investigations.'

  'Investigations?'

  'There are agencies that will handle something like this with discretion, and I want to try and trace your father's family now that we know his name was the same as your mother's. All this is not important to me,' Max went on quietly. 'I'd like us to have children, of course. But what matters to me is you and I—our happiness together.'

  'But the family—the estates?' Sophie stared wide-eyed.

  'Emil can inherit… or one of my sister's boys. There are plenty of heirs and time enough to think about that.' He paused. 'It was for you I went to England,' he said simply. 'I think you may want children, so we have to make sure it's safe for us to have them.'

  At his words tears started to her eyes. She was bewildered, confused. Why had he taken all that trouble to trace her family, to check her story? Was it because of the marriage he and Dorothea had planned? It certainly wouldn't take place if there could be no children, and that could explain his trip. But now he said he wasn't bothered if they had no children. None of it made sense, and she couldn't seem to put the pieces together. And her anger was melting away. Face to face with him, watching the unguarded eagerness in his eyes, it was difficult to believe what Dorothea had told her.

  How could this understanding gentle man be capable of such tortured planning, such deliberate deception? Unhappily she turned her head away. She didn't know what to think.

  'I see we're back with my being a cheat and a liar,' Max said softly. 'Can you tell me about that now?'

  Sophie hesitated. 'Thank you for going to England for me,' she said finally. 'I'm truly grateful for all the trouble you took. But it doesn't change anything. I still go tomorrow.'

  'So you fling accusations at me and I'm not to be told what it's all about?' He turned his back to her. 'Very well, I'll have to find out in my own way. I'll start with my grandmother and work my way round the household till I find out who's upset you.'

  'No, Max!' She was horrified. 'You know your grandmother mustn't be upset.'

  'So you do care about someone.' He rounded on her. 'It just happens it's not me.

  'I… I hate scenes, especially pointless ones. When I've
gone, of course you must do as you think best.'

  'Bargaining, are we?' he drawled.

  'Certainly not. This isn't a game.'

  'I'm glad you realise it,' he said angrily. 'It happens to be my future you're playing with so lightly.'

  Suddenly he sighed. 'I'm very tired, Sophie. I've had a hellish four days and I'm not in the mood for guessing games. Either you tell me what it's all about or I'll throttle it out of you.'

  He was standing over her and she should have been frightened, but his words were so childish and he looked so cross and weary, she wanted to reach up and caress his face. Hurriedly she looked away. Why did he still have this power to rouse her to tenderness? And what had happened to her anger? Suddenly she didn't know whether to laugh or to cry.

  'Come on, cry,' he said, as usual acutely perceptive of her mood. 'Your tears I can handle. God knows I'm getting enough practice. I've never met such a girl for weeping!'

  'I never cry,' she said crossly. 'Normally,' she added irritably.

  His lips twitched. 'I'm glad you told me. I might never have known.'

  'Stop it, Max. Teasing me won't change anything.'

  'Nothing will be changed by whatever's bugging you. I love you and we're going to be married.'

  'No,' she said, her voice low and vehement. 'I'm not marrying you. I don't love you,' she lied firmly.

  'What?' In one stride he was at her side, his hands gripping her arms. 'We'll see about that!'

  Sophie guessed what was coming and twisted in his hold to free herself. If he kissed her she would be lost to all sense and reason. He bent his head, and as his mouth touched her lips she bit him hard. He cursed loudly and let her go. She stumbled away from him and headed for the door.

  'You vixen!' he muttered, and came after her. Taking her in his arms, he held her hard against him. 'That's enough,' he commanded. 'Quieten down and I'll let you go.'

  She drew back sharply as she felt his breath on her hair and the warmth of his body against hers.

  'I'm spattering your hair with blood,' he said suddenly, and she smiled weakly. 'That would be a good memento, wouldn't it?' For a second his arms tightened and then he released her. Keeping one arm round her shoulders, he walked her over to the bed and sat her down. Taking a chair opposite, he pulled out a handkerchief and dabbed at his mouth. 'I may never be the same again,' he said, and smiled at her. She dropped her eyes.

  'I think I've mentioned that I've known quite a few women,' he mused.

  'Several times,' she commented acidly.

  'Wait for it,' Max stopped her. 'You might even say I don't go round emotionally blinkered, blind to what women feel and think.'

  'So?' she enquired coldly.

  'At the risk of sounding enormously conceited, I have to tell you that you do love me—very much indeed. Only a woman deeply in love would refuse to marry me because she thought she couldn't give me children.'

  Sophie blushed. 'People change,' she said woodenly.

  'Indeed they do,' he replied promptly. 'That's why I have to keep you close to me and make sure you continue to love me. I have all sorts of plans for that,' he added with a hideous leer.

  'I'm sorry, I can't appreciate the joke just now—'

  'My dear, if I didn't joke, I'd be striding about foaming at the mouth and likely to do you an injury. It's a defence, and it's getting more fragile by the minute.'

  He meant it. He was on the edge of violence: she could feel it in the tension of his body. She wasn't sure if she could cope with any more emotion, but she sensed he wouldn't let her go till she'd told him. She gripped her hands tightly together.

  'Dorothea told me why you want to marry me,' she said tensely.

  When he didn't comment she looked up at him. His face was clear of guile. He looked merely surprised.

  'And why was that?' he asked softly.

  Sophie shook her head and looked down at her hands.

  'Tell me,' he said tautly. 'Now.'

  And she told him. Everything. When she'd finished, he was curiously silent, his eyes fixed on some point above her head.

  'Of course,' he said at last, 'it all fits, doesn't it? I refused to have an affair with you; I pressurised you almost from the moment we met, and only marriage or the pretence of marriage would do—and I came to London after you. Very clever. I under-rated her.' He looked down into Sophie's face. 'There's only one thing that puzzles me. Why did you believe her?'

  'All the reasons you've just given,' she said miserably.

  'And your feelings, your understanding of me— what happened to that?'

  She sat uncomfortably silent.

  'You believed I could deceive my grandmother in that shoddy way? That I'd just snap my fingers and abandon the work I love? And what for? A woman who wants to do the rounds of balls and theatres to impress her friends?'

  'No,' Sophie said tonelessly, 'because you love her.'

  'My darling girl!' he objected.

  'She's exquisitely beautiful,' said Sophie abjectly. 'She's an aristocrat and she's Austrian. It doesn't take any imagination at all to see why you'd love her.'

  'God damn you, woman, don't you know anything?' Max got up to stride about the room. 'She's cold and hard. She's ruthlessly selfish and grabs whatever she wants when the mood takes her. I don't know what she's like between the sheets, but I can imagine. And it puts the shivers up me. Her husband who adores her she's managed to reduce to a blabbering jelly, and as a mother she's a dead loss.'

  He stopped marching about and looked down at her.

  'And you thought I could love her? Follow in poor Klaus's footsteps? What sort of a man do you take me for?' He leaned down and gripped the arms of her chair. 'And that's another thing. Can you really believe I'd do something so hideous to hurt my cousin, a man I love and admire, who's been my friend since childhood?'

  She didn't answer, nor did she look up at him.

  'That's all very well,' she said, her voice low, 'but there was a time when you loved her.'

  'So she took you back as far as that, did she? Yes, I had a crush on her in my teens. She was a girl with blue eyes and blonde pigtails. At that age that's all it takes, and I'm certainly not going to apologise for it. But it faded on the wind.' He straightened up. 'In Canada I met some real women and never gave her a thought. When I came back she was married to Klaus, and I never envied him. I could see her for what she was.'

  For a moment Sophie sat uncomfortably silent.

  'Whatever you say, I know I don't compare with her—in other things,' she whispered. 'I'm… I've no… real experience of… life.' She swallowed. 'There are things I haven't told you that…'

  'Hush,' Max said softly, and put two fingers across her lips. 'Just stop right there.' He pulled her up into his arms and held her gently.

  'You don't understand…'

  'Oh, but I do. I understand perfectly.' He sighed lightly against her hair. 'Come, let's sit down.'

  He pulled her down with him to sit on the edge of the bed. 'You thought I'd fallen in love with Nanny Carter, didn't you? The cool, composed, apparently mature woman.' He bent his head to search her face. 'But you see, I didn't. I fell in love with the girl underneath all that starch, a girl with fire and passions that frighten her because they might leap out of her control.'

  'How did you know?' she whispered, her eyes huge and dark in her face.

  'This,' he said, and took her lips in a swift hard kiss. 'It's all there,' he whispered throatily, 'and all mine— dammed up and waiting to pour out just for me.' He rubbed his thumb softly against her lower lip. 'That mouth gives you away.' He took both her hands in his and smiled into her eyes. 'And don't forget I've had you in my bed—alas very briefly, but long enough to know the wildness is there.' She blushed.

  'Then you weren't disappointed?' she asked awkwardly, her voice low, her eyes lowered away from him.

  'Dear God, Sophie, don't you know how I long for you? I've never wanted a woman so desperately before, and I can't handle it. I'm afraid of hurti
ng you and yet I long for you.' He pulled her close and buried his face in her hair. 'I don't know how I've managed to wait so long,' he whispered.

  'Then you do know I…'

  'That I'm going to be the first?' He trailed his fingers gently through her hair. 'I was almost sure last week—in my room.'

  'And you… don't mind…?'

  'Ah, Sophie, don't you know it's every man's dream to be first with the woman he loves?'

  Flushing deeply, she looked into his eyes, her own brilliant with happiness.

  'You and I, Sophie, are going to be married. And soon,' Max said huskily. 'But tonight I want to show you just how beautiful you are. I'm going to make love to you—endlessly and slowly—as I've longed to do for numberless weeks. And tomorrow morning you will know how much I love you and you'll understand why you need never again fear any other woman.' He kissed her lips lightly. 'But first things first. I want all questions and misunderstandings cleared up. No more shadows and no more doubts.'

  He lifted her hands to his mouth, kissing each one, his lips hot against her palms. 'Well?' he demanded softly.

  'There is one more thing. Only it's silly really…'

  'Come on, out with it.'

  'Max, why did you want us to pretend to be married?' she asked softly.

  'Ah, yes, the bogus marriage.' He smiled ruefully. 'I hoped, given a little time, I could turn it into a real one, of course. Even a child could have guessed that,' he teased her. Then his face lost its smile. 'Is that it then?' he asked. 'No more bogeys?'

  She shook her head. 'No more.'

  'All right,' he went on gravely, 'now it's my turn.' He lowered his head to regard her steadily. 'Look at me. Sophie,' he commanded gently. 'I have a question and the answer is very important.' His hold on her hands tightened, and she looked anxiously into his face, wondering what was coming. 'Have you any doubts about marrying me because of all this?' he gestured round the room. 'The life I lead?'

  She looked puzzled.

  'Life here is no picnic,' he explained. 'I have responsibilities to people who are totally dependent on me. Many of them have been here all their lives, some have worked for my father and grandfather before me, and I can never abandon them. They have nowhere else to go. Servants at mealtimes may sound grand to outsiders, but it has its disadvantages. Our privacy will always be limited, and pleasing ourselves may often have to be put at the bottom of the list.'