'Then why feel guilt?' Arden questioned, before, suddenly coming to flatten her, was proof that however much he might deny it, Blane had loved Delcine for far longer than the short time he had said it had taken for him to be cured of his infatuation. 'It's a well known fact,' she said, wishing her head was not so full of snippets read and thought forgotten, as again something else was recalled, 'that people only usually feel guilt when they have love for the person who has died.'
'Sorry to beat your amateur psychologist theories on the head,' he replied, not smiling, his look stern. 'I repeat, I did not love her.'
'You didn't hate her either.'
'No, I didn't,' he agreed.
He was then leaning forward to take Arden's hands in his, his dark eyes refusing to let her look away as she felt a tingling sensation start, from just his touch. And it was with his hands gripping hers that Blane told her what it was he had felt for Delcine. Quietly it was, that he told her:
'I was indifferent to her.'
'Indifferent?'
An almost imperceptible nod of his head followed her exclamation. Then with his eyes still fastened to hers, he was explaining:
'Guilt warred in me during my waking hours that I should feel indifferent to her death. Guilt that I should only pull her out from that wreckage because it was the instinctive thing to do, some sense I was unaware of telling me the car was going to go up. I wasn't aware I'd received a bang on my head, or gathered a cut face, my only awareness—that I was indifferent to see her dead—I found overwhelmingly appalling.'
As she remembered how into himself he had gone, Arden's feelings were not for herself. 'You were in deep shock,' she said gently. 'You couldn't be expected to feel anything. You…'
'But I was feeling,' he contradicted. 'I felt nothing but indifference for Delcine, admittedly, but that brought on an inner loathing for myself that it should be so. What kind of a man had I become? I kept asking. A ruthless bastard in business, as your newspaper friend had said, but had I become a man who felt nothing for anyone?'
For a moment Arden thought Blane had gone back to the person he had been, that person who had been within himself. And quickly she was there to tell him:
'You weren't always a swine. You were charming to me one particular morning at Brynmoel, I remember.'
'To get you to stay,' he owned. But he promptly sent away any idea that it had been the charm of the ruthlessness in him that had been at work in that endeavour to get her to stay, when he added, 'I needed you there, Arden.'
'To help you cope with your guilt?' she asked. 'I don't think I did a very good job of it. There weren't too many occasions after that when you exercised that charm.'
'I…'
He broke off suddenly, his eyes noting the scarlet colour that was all at once covering her. And when next he spoke, it was not, Arden felt sure, what he had been going to say.
'You're remembering that early evening when I— comforted—you after I came back from my solo walk?'
She wished he had gone on to say what he had been going to say originally. For he had done nothing to reduce her colour that he had guessed her thoughts so accurately.
'That was some—er—comforting,' she said, striving for a light note. But she was to stare wide-eyed at him when he admitted:
'It wasn't anything I hadn't wanted to do a dozen times before.'
The word, 'Honestly?' left her before she could think. Then, collecting herself, 'I mean, you never showed— never said, never by…'
'I thought I had said,' he replied, to surprise her further.
'I don't remem…' Blane came in to help her out.
'Do you remember that first night I spent in this room?' he sent her mind back. 'That night when the heavy burden of guilt in my conscience had a field day the moment I closed my eyes, the war within me taking the shape of a nightmare where I relived that crash more violently than when it had actually occurred?'
'Yes,' she answered, her voice hushed as she relived her own memory of that night.
'In hospital it was a nightmare I experienced every time I closed my eyes,' he went on. 'But it was the first time that I had ever come out of its violence to find someone who'd let me have the blade edge of her tongue not many hours before looking like an angel as she cradled me to her breast.'
Remembering his coming awake from that tortured sleep as if it had only just happened, she recalled how Blane had wanted someone with him when he had said 'Stay with me', and:
'Oh!' she exclaimed involuntarily. And seeing that he was right there with her in her thinking, 'You didn't mean anything—when you asked me to stay, other than that—that you wanted my—company—er—did you?'
'Sweet innocent,' said Blane to throw her again, continuing when she hadn't quite recovered, and making her heart suddenly to beat wildly, 'while my feelings for you were not then involved, what I was asking—in some forlorn hope that I might forget the torment in my head for a time—was that you should stay, to sleep with me.'
'Oh,' broke from her again, even as she wondered if perhaps she should be angry with him for what he had just said. But with that 'my feelings for you were not then involved' buzzing in her head, there was not the slightest chance for what she should be doing to get a foot in.
'Oh, indeed,' he said, a gentle look coming her way. 'By morning, of course, I was hating you because your pure mind had not only not seen what I had asked, but also that what you had seen was me weak when in the throes of that nightmare.'
'You—hated me?' she asked faintly, any foolish hopes that had started to rise smashed to smithereens.
'That's what I told myself when the very next day you came to tidy my room.' He smiled then, a smile that took the sting out of his words. 'I hardened my heart against you, Arden Kirkham, because, although you were already proving yourself to be unlike any other woman I'd ever met—I'd seen that same sweetness you were showing with your "How are you this morning" in other women, but only to find that there was always a price tag attached.'
'Money?' she queried.
'In cash or kind,' he replied, leaving her to guess that he hadn't been mean when it came to bestowing costly gifts. 'But you, I was to discover, really were different.'
'Because I wanted to give you your money back?' she asked, recalling how he had destroyed the cheque she had handed him.
'For a hundred different reasons. You were not all sweetness and light from the very start. Even when you did know who I was it didn't change you. No pretty cooing did I get from you! Charges of sulking and being spoiled were my lot from the moment we arrived at Brynmoel.'
'It got you eating,' she murmured.
'You chose another route to charm me,' said Blane, his remark doing nothing to quieten her racing heart. 'You needled me into coming to the table for that first meal.'
'You said I—er—charmed you,' she fished blatantly.
'Charmed—enchanted, both down to you from the moment I awoke in the middle of the night to find you there beside me. From then on I started to cease being the walking automaton I had become. From that moment, I began to feel again.'
Wondering if she was storing up a load of grief for herself, Arden could not help but be charmed too by what he was telling her. She did not want him to stop, for never had he been like this with her.
'That was the night I dared not wake you for fear of making love to you,' Blane confessed openly. 'While you were asleep, looking so innocent, yet so wholly desirable, I knew I wouldn't harm you. I felt strong enough to carry three times your weight,' he confessed honestly without seeming in any way ashamed. 'But suddenly, while I was looking at you, an odd kind of contentment came to me. A contentment,' he owned, 'to which I had long been a stranger. It was that feeling of contentment that had me covering you over and lying down with you. Somehow I seemed to know that never again would I have that nightmare. I then fell into the best sleep I'd had in years.'
Choked by emotion of what sounded beautiful now, not outrageous as she had thought at
the time, Arden had to make an effort to keep that emotion out of her voice, as quietly she said:
'You were fast away when I woke up.'
Blane's grin appeared. 'And didn't you give me what for! You'd stormed out before it dawned on me that, the mood you were in, you'd gone straight to your room to pack.'
'Hence the soft-soap treatment when I joined you in the kitchen.'
'How could I let you go? You'd freed me from my nightmares, stirred me into feeling again. I, who had no faith in women, was beginning to see that there was one woman in whom I could have faith.'
'You—learned to trust me?' she choked.
He nodded, though he qualified, 'Even while I was distrusting everything about you, I was learning to trust. Many times as I watched you cheerfully tackling mundane jobs I asked myself 'What's she up to?' It was a private battle I was to have daily, right up until that evening you were so distressed that I'd gone missing.'
Arden choked on a cough. Suddenly she was seeing that wanting to hear all that he was saying, that she had been more than meeting him halfway.
'Er—anybody would have been—distressed—er— knowing what you'd been through,' she said, and tried to keep her expression blank when she saw him frown at the suggestion that she would have acted the same way, be it him or anyone else.
Then with another of those deep breaths that had had her crazily thinking before that he was being attacked by unaccustomed nerves, Blane's grip on her hands, whether he was aware of it or not, tightened. And his voice was taut, when quietly he dropped his bombshell.
'Then it's not as I'd hoped? That you love me, as I— love you.'
'You love me!' The words had left her rapidly, and it was her fingers which were doing the gripping then, as her heart found a totally different beat from all others to thump to.
'You wonder that I fell in love with you?'
'W-well—y-yes,' she stammered, still not fully believing it. That doubt found a firmer footing, sudden suspicion showing as, hardening her heart, she questioned, 'You're saying you suddenly realised you were in love with me when you saw I was determined to leave—and that's why, out of the blue, you forced yourself to ask me to marry you?'
'Good God, no!' he denied. 'I'd known I was in love with you from the day I thought my heart would stop when you only just missed putting yourself and the car through the brick wall of the cottage. I knew it then, when in the absence of boxing your ears I shook you. But it was I who was shaken,' he said. 'I was speechless to know I'd fallen in love with you.'
Arden remembered how dumbstruck he had looked. She had thought it was because she had dared to answer him back. But desperately wanting to believe, all she could find to say, was:
'You—looked murderous!'
'I knew terror then such as I've never known,' Blane admitted.
But even with his eyes taking on a bleak look as he remembered, the nagging doubt in Arden that he could love her refused to go away.
'But you still left it until I had the front door open and looked ready to walk from you before you asked me to marry you,' she said. 'You said,' she was suddenly remembering, 'and it was after I'd nearly pranged the car; that one experience of marriage was enough for you.'
'That was at a time when with so many dark feelings stewing inside me, I was also fighting with all I had against the love I'd discovered in me for you,' he explained. 'Can you not forgive,' he went on to ask, 'that with my thoughts catching me out, my thoughts straying to wanting to marry you, that the black mood I was in from having come face to face with myself should have me warring against you too. Will you not forgive that it was only when I saw it looked as though I couldn't stop you from leaving that the need to have you mine took precedence over everything else, and forced me to ask you to marry me?'
'But you let me go!' Arden exclaimed, wondering if her heart would ever beat normally again. 'I didn't answer you, yet you let me walk away from you.'
Blane's hands going up to her arms, had her striving hard for some semblance of calm. 'I wasn't ready to tell you I loved you,' he said softly. 'I'm a mere man, my dear. If I'd read the signs wrong—I didn't want to have to live with the fool I'd made of myself. I grew angry then when you just walked away as though I hadn't said a word. Angry with you, angry with myself.'
'I heard the front door crash before I'd got as far as my car,' said Arden, an ease trying to tiptoe into her heartsickness, if she would let it.
'I was furious,' he said, 'but I found, as I heard your car pick up speed and then no further sound, that I needed something of you with me. Anger went, fury went, and I was in the kitchen with my hand reaching out for that ridiculous painting book which not five minutes before had been there.' He paused, then looked tenderly at her. 'Only, my dearest Arden,' he said, oh, so very softly, 'that book was not there.'
The way he had gently breathed the endearment 'my dearest Arden' was her undoing. And the last remnants of resistance in her were utterly defeated. She could no longer hold out against him.
'I—wanted—something of you with me, too,' she said, and found she was shy all of a sudden.
But she was not left to feel shy for very long. 'I was hoping with everything in me that that was the way it was,' Blane breathed. Then without her knowing quite how it had happened, he had flexed strong muscles, and that hold on her arms had him taking her bodily out of her chair.
With both his arms around her, Arden found she was sitting on his lap, his face turned so that he was looking down into her face. And then his face was drawing nearer. 'My own dear love,' he whispered, an abundance of relief to be heard in that so very quiet tone the moment before his mouth met hers.
'God, how I've needed to kiss you, to hold you,' he said when at last he took his mouth from hers.
And because one kiss was nowhere near enough to cover the yawning aching gap, his longing for her in the month they had been apart, again he took possession of her lips, his kisses thrilling her, having her straining nearer to him, her response equalling that which he had aroused in her before.
With Blane's fingers caressing her face, like some man who had to physically touch her before he would believe she was really there, Arden's fingers played about his hair, his nape, as he kissed every place his fingers visited.
'My darling,' he whispered, his lips on her ears, feeling her response, no holding back in her, 'Love me?'
'Oh yes,' she sighed. 'Yes, so much! I've been heartsick this past month wondering when, if ever, it would get better.'
Arden suffering that same mental torture he had suffered on being apart, had Blane's arms tightening around her, so that it was breathlessly that she returned his new onslaught to her mouth. And with his hands caressing, making her senses sing, Arden was ready to give him her all, a moan of pleasure breaking from her as his hands found their way inside her shirt to her creamy swelling breasts, to the hardened peak beneath his fingers, that pink summit pulsing out her need for him.
Then suddenly she was aware of Blane pacing down the heady emotion he had fired in her, his look rueful that for a minute he had seemed to be going out of control.
'I'm sorry,' he said, his fingers stroking away from her breasts, that same hand pulling the edges of her shirt together, although he did not rebutton it. 'I rather forgot, didn't I, that the last time I was on the way to losing my head this way, you weren't quite ready for the—experience?'
Arden could not help that her cheeks should colour. But her eyes had been hungry for the sight of him, and there was no way now that she had no need to hide her emotions from him, that she was going to look away from his eyes, as she confessed:
'Actually—er—actually, what I was trying to say before, only I couldn't get it out, was—er…' she cleared her throat again, '… that I was—more than ready to go where you—er—wanted to—take me.'
'But you shook your head! You indicated…'
'I was trying to say—don't ask,' she confessed. A trifle embarrassed, she rubbed her nose. 'I—er—got a bi
t shy around then,' she owned, her colour still high, though whether it was from the ardent way he was looking at her, or from her own feelings, she could not have said, as she added, 'I just couldn't get the words out to say,' she beamed him a sudden wicked smile that seemed to delight him, 'yes, please,' she ended.
But wanting Blane to kiss her, when he looked to be going to do that very thing, suddenly Arden was recalling the long agonising month it had been since she had last seen him.
'You said you were hoping that it was because I needed something of you with me that I'd taken that book,' she said, her face serious all at once. 'But why leave it until now before you came to find out?'
Tenderly, Blane kissed her lips just once more. Then with one arm tight around her, his other hand came to do up the buttons on her shirt.
'Just in case I get distracted again,' he murmured. 'You're a potent bundle, my little love, and it seems I haven't anywhere near enough explained myself.' He broke off then as if, his thoughts only for her, he wanted her to be reassured. 'You do believe, though, that I love you deeply? That my love, my life are yours, that without you there's no life for me?'
Arden nodded, her eyes misty, a deep emotion welling in her at his sincere words. 'Yes,' she said, 'I believe you.' She wanted to tell him then that she trusted him, and that no other explanations were necessary.
But Blane, a look of quiet adoration on his face, seemed to have read the trust in her face. But nevertheless, he was bent on taking even doubts that were no longer there, from her.
'Trust me always as you do now,' he said quietly, emotion working in his throat just once, before gaining control, he went on. 'At first it was my intention to come and find you straight away. You had to love me, I thought when I saw that book was missing.'
'You had second thoughts?'
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