by Helen Brooks
As they reached the lights of the house he still didn’t speak, not until they had divested themselves of their outer garments in the hall and she walked towards the stairs. ‘You go up,’ he said quietly as she turned to face him on the bottom step. ‘I need a drink.’
He turned and walked into his empty sitting-room, the dogs following at his heels, as she walked slowly up the stairs and away from him, and suddenly that seemed forebodingly appropriate as the last drop of magic melted away.
CHAPTER EIGHT
IT WAS snowing again when Fabia awoke late Christmas morning after a restless, troubled night. Mary was pulling back the blinds, her good-natured face smiling as always, and Fabia saw a tray on the small table by her bed that the housekeeper must have brought in with her. ‘Just a light snack of grapefruit and toast,’ Mary said as she followed Fabia’s gaze. ‘Don’t want to spoil your Christmas dinner and it’s ten o’clock already.’
‘Oh, I’m sorry, Mary,’ Fabia apologised as she struggled into a sitting position in the soft bed. ‘You shouldn’t have bothered with a tray for me, you must have heaps to do.’
‘No bother, Miss Fabia,’ Mary replied warmly. ‘I came in earlier but you looked so peaceful I didn’t like to wake you.’
Peaceful? Fabia thought miserably. She hadn’t known a moment’s peace since she had met the master of this household, if the truth be known.
‘Mr Alex has taken the dogs for a walk,’ Mary continued cheerfully, ‘but he’ll be back in about half an hour and wondered if you’d like to come and see the mistress with him?’
‘Yes, that’d be fine,’ Fabia said quietly. ‘I’ll have breakfast and get dressed and come down, Mary. Is there anything I can do to help you this morning?’
‘Help me?’ Mary looked horrified. ‘Oh, no, Miss Fabia, Cook and I have got everything under control. It wouldn’t do for you to help.’
‘No, I suppose not,’ Fabia agreed slowly, ‘but I’m not used to doing nothing. With looking after myself and the flat and doing a full-time job I usually haven’t got a minute to spare.’
‘Well, you just enjoy the luxury while it lasts, then,’ Mary said brightly, ‘but it was nice of you to ask, Miss Fabia, very nice.’ She bustled off after placing the tray on Fabia’s lap, her small body consumed with energy, and as Fabia ate she considered the small woman’s words.
‘Enjoy it while it lasts,’ she repeated thoughtfully. The staff didn’t expect her to be around again, then? The thought depressed her even though she had decided the same thing.
She was downstairs waiting for Alex when he returned from his walk, his face glowing and his bare head covered in snow. ‘You should have worn a hat,’ she admonished as he stood in the hall melting all over the thick carpet. ‘You lose most of your body heat from the top of your head.’
‘Really?’ He cast a sardonic eye at her. ‘And would you care if I was cold?’ He was smiling as he spoke but she knew he meant the message the words were asking. ‘Silly question, really,’ he added as he gazed at her troubled face, ‘and as I’m sure it’s one you’ve got no intention of answering I won’t wait for a reply.’
He glanced at the huge box she was holding in her arms. ‘Isabella’s present?’ She nodded slowly. The tiny mirror was in her skirt pocket but she was wondering whether to give it to him or not now. ‘Shall we go up, then?’ He picked up several presents from under the tree in the main drawing-room first and then followed her up the stairs to his grandmother’s room, where they spent a pleasant hour with the old lady, who was looking considerably better, but acceded grudgingly to Alex’s repeated orders for her to stay in bed.
Fabia was touched to find that Isabella had bought her a gift, a superb dark leather handbag with a matching purse inside.
‘You shouldn’t have,’ she said gratefully, her face expressing her pleasure more adequately than words, to which Isabella replied with a loud snort, although the old face was soft as it glanced at the young woman sitting on the bed.
Dinner was a traditional affair, a huge turkey with all the trimmings followed by plum pudding doused in brandy. It felt strange to be sitting with Alex at the beautifully decorated festive table in the lovely room surrounded by all the evidence of his wealth. She glanced at him as he spooned thick cream on to the rich pudding and her heart twisted painfully. At that moment she would have given the world for him to be a normal working man struggling to make ends meet—maybe then she would have had a chance? She caught at her thoughts abruptly. It was madness to think like this.
‘I’m glad you’re wearing it.’ As the deep slumberous voice broke into her thoughts she raised her eyes to meet his. ‘The pendant.’ He touched his own neck. ‘It suits you.’
‘It’s beautiful.’ She forced a smile to her lips as she spoke and he nodded slowly, his eyes warm and soft with their strange glowing gold light.
‘It has its own kind of loveliness but I prefer the flesh and blood kind...like yours.’ He wasn’t smiling as he spoke, and there was a strange kind of intimacy that had crept unbidden into the room. She stared at him dumbly. ‘Thank you for coming here with me, Fabia,’ he said softly as their eyes held and locked. ‘It’s been...good.’
‘Good?’ She laughed sharply, purposely trying to break the mood before it took hold of her and her mind spiralled into the inevitable confusion he always managed to evoke. ‘I got the impression I’m a trial and tribulation to you.’
‘Did you?’ He smiled slowly, his eyes dancing as he glanced at her defiant face. ‘Well, maybe I’m due for a little trouble in my life right now.’
She didn’t like him in this conciliatory mood, it was too...seductive. ‘Yes...’ For the life of her she couldn’t think up a suitable crushing reply when faced with the questioning intensity that had now taken hold of his whole body. She sat, hardly daring to breathe, as he slowly rose from his chair, only to relax with an almost painful sense of anticlimax as the phone rang piercingly in the hall, shattering the mood into a hundred tiny pieces.
‘Mr Alex?’ Mary stood in the doorway as he resumed his seat, his face expressing his irritation. ‘It’s Miss Susan on the phone. She wonders what time the party begins tomorrow.’
‘Susan?’ He glared at poor Mary as though she were to blame for the spoilt moment. ‘Same time as it does every year, I suppose,’ he said abruptly. ‘What’s the matter with the woman?’
‘I think she wants a word,’ Mary said apologetically, and Alex snorted crossly.
‘Tell her I’m eating,’ he said coldly, ignoring his empty plate with regal indifference as Mary scuttled away.
‘Party?’ Fabia’s heart had dropped like a stone.
‘Oh, haven’t I mentioned it?’ he said with a little frown of annoyance. ‘I meant to. It’s one of Isabella’s established laws that the whole of Cumbria congregates here on Boxing Day afternoon and unfortunately this year is no different.’
‘Oh.’ Fabia’s voice was very small.
‘We don’t do much Christmas afternoon,’ Alex said after the silence had stretched on and on interminably, ‘but I hear one of the big lakes near by is frozen and being used for skating at the moment. We can either watch TV here or go there, whichever you’d prefer?’ She caught his eyes fixed on her with a curious intensity as she glanced up but the next instant his expression had cleared into its usual remoteness.
‘I’d love to go and watch at least,’ she said eagerly, ‘but I can’t skate. I don’t know how.’
‘I’ll teach you,’ he said with a deep softness in his voice that brought a sudden hot flush to her face. ‘We’ve several pairs of old skates somewhere; I’m sure we can find a pair to fit you.’
In ten minutes they were in the car with two pairs of skates on the back seat. It had stopped snowing but the sky was heavy and white and the air bitingly cold, all nature transfixed in its arctic grip. It was the start of a wonderful afternoon. When they arrived at the lakeside Fabia had the strangest impression that she had stepped back into Victorian times. The i
ce was alive with brightly coloured figures muffled to the eyebrows in long skirts and warm trousers and on the bank a man was selling hot roasted chestnuts, his glowing brazier vivid against the white snow.
The very air was intoxicating and Fabia made a sudden decision to take this afternoon, just this one, for herself, to enjoy this time with the tall handsome man at her side as though there had been no past and would be no future. Just the glorious present in all its poignant sweetness.
She discovered, to her delight, that she was a natural skater, and with Alex’s arm about her waist and his hand holding hers in a firm supportive grip she found herself flying over the ice like a bird, gaining confidence every minute.
As the sky began to turn a soft rosy red they stopped for a cone of hot chestnuts, warming their hands in the heat of the brazier as they chatted to the other couples standing near by. She noticed that several of the women’s eyes turned again and again to the tall and darkly vital man at her side but each time she glanced up into his face the golden-brown gaze was fixed on her, and when one of the women, more daring than the others, suggested they all swap partners for a time, he firmly declined, stating that as this was Fabia’s first time on the ice he would trust her with no one but himself.
Even as the thrill of satisfaction shivered along her spine she found that other self cautioning her carefully, warning her silently that this was still Alexander Cade—just another facet that she hadn’t seen before.
‘I would have thought you would have liked to skate with that little redhead for a while,’ she said lightly as they returned to the ice turned pink by the sky’s fire overhead.
‘Why?’ he asked baldly, his eyes narrowed against the cold.
‘Why?’ The direct question floored her temporarily. ‘Well...’ She paused again. ‘She’s a very good skater,’ she finished a little aggressively.
‘Oh, I see,’ he drawled softly, ‘a very good skater? Maybe I prefer to stumble about with a very poor skater.’ There was a coldness in the mocking taunt that warned her to leave the subject of the redhead alone, and after a few moments Alex began to show her how to spin and weave, laughing with her as in his efforts to save her from falling they both finished up in a heap on the ice.
‘Nice state of affairs, this,’ he grumbled laughingly as he helped her up from the ice, brushing the white flakes from her coat and adjusting her scarf more cosily round her face. She found little gestures like this almost unbearably painful, awakening as they did a whole host of abandoned dreams. There was something in his tenderness, his caring, that was more seductive than any lovemaking.
‘You’re a very complex man, aren’t you, Alex?’ she said softly, resisting his attempt to draw her back into the whirling arc of skaters. ‘I wish I knew which was the real you.’
‘The real me?’ There was an expression of genuine bewilderment on his face. ‘You’ve seen the real me, Fabia. What you see is what you get.’
‘I don’t believe that.’ There was no amusement in her face now as she looked up into the dark golden gaze. ‘I’ve heard you can be ruthless in business and I’ve seen you in action in the social scene, remember. All that doesn’t tie up with...’ She paused, uncertain of whether to continue.
‘With the family man?’ He had known how the sentence would finish. ‘I thought you had more sense than that, Fabia. Of course I can’t wear my heart on my sleeve when I’m conducting business negotiations; that side of my life is completely separate. As for my public face...that’s what it is, a face. I put it on when necessary, it’s as simple as that.’
‘And the women?’ She had to ask. ‘Do you fool them the way you fool everyone else?’
‘You’re deliberately misunderstanding me.’ He drew her away from the crowd and off the ice to a more secluded spot. ‘If you are asking me if there have been women in my life then yes, Fabia, there have. Have, in the past. Each one meant something at the time although there was no great love story, I admit, but I have no intention of apologising to you or anyone else.’ His eyes held hers intently. ‘I’m a man, angel-face, an ordinary man with normal needs. I haven’t lived like a monk but the things that are reported in the papers are absolute rubbish. If only a small fraction of them were true I’d probably be dead by now with physical exhaustion! I don’t show everyone the real me, I grant you, but can you honestly say you do? That anyone does? There are very few people that one meets in a lifetime who really reach the core.’
‘Oh, come on, Alex.’ She took a step backwards as she spoke, away from his hand holding hers. The reference to the women he had known had hurt more than she would have thought possible in spite of her prompting it. ‘On the one hand you are part of the jet-set and you said yourself you work hard and play hard—’
‘There’s nothing wrong with that,’ he interrupted harshly, ‘and I resent the term jet-set. It implies something I am not. First and foremost I control my business empire, and that takes a great deal of time and effort. I have neither the time nor the inclination to waste my talents, and I do have a certain flair for the cut and thrust of my occupation, whether you believe it or not.’ His face was cold and proud now and his big body stiff with pride. ‘That is a separate part of my life, as I have said. It doesn’t mean that ultimately I don’t want what every man wants: a loving wife, happy home, children and so on.’
‘You really believe that’s what most men want?’ she asked bitterly as a whole host of burning memories swept over her. ‘Then your experience of the male sex must be very different from mine.’
‘Unfortunately some men are arrogant and foolish,’ he said slowly. ‘They will discard a pearl along with the common stones in their avid search for the deception of experience. And some of the most heartless men I’ve known didn’t have a penny to their names, incidentally.’
‘We were talking about men, not money,’ she said slowly, and he shook his head thoughtfully, his eyes glittering in the last rays of the dying sun.
‘I have the feeling it’s the same thing with you and that the two together add up to something...harmful?’ She didn’t answer the query in his voice and he stared at her for a full minute before turning away with a little gesture of disappointment. ‘Still determined not to let me in, Fabia?’ he asked grimly as he glanced at the darkening sky. ‘The light’s gone. We’d better get home.’
It was a cold, distant stranger who drove home, and as she glanced at his face once or twice under her lashes all the old doubts and suspicions came bubbling to the surface. He was still manipulating her, she thought wretchedly. He had admitted to it at the beginning of their relationship and nothing had changed, not really. He was rich and powerful and used to getting his own way, and unfortunately their circumstances, the season, the beauty all around them, everything was working to his advantage.
But she couldn’t let her guard down. She had done it once all those years ago and nearly been destroyed in the process. She couldn’t risk that again.
Mary served high tea in front of a huge roaring fire in the drawing-room later that evening and in spite of the mouth-watering sandwiches and light fluffy cakes Fabia found her appetite had deserted her completely. She had to stop this pointless longing for something that was as distant as the moon, it was tearing her apart, but the sight of him stretched out in the chair on the other side of the fire, his long legs toasting comfortably and his plate piled high with food, invoked a positively painful ache in her throat that made her eyes burn and her hands clench.
Mary came to collect the tea-trolley, cluck-clucking at the amount of food still left. ‘Don’t blame me, Mary,’ Alex said teasingly, glancing at Fabia meaningfully.
‘Aren’t you hungry, Miss Fabia?’ Mary asked quickly. ‘You do look a bit peaky.’
‘I’m fine, Mary, really.’ Fabia smiled brightly. ‘I made rather a pig of myself at lunchtime, I’m afraid.’
‘Oh, as long as you’re all right, then.’ Mary bustled off as Alex lifted wry eyebrows.
‘Another of your admi
rers, I’ll be bound.’ He joined her on the small two-seater sofa as he spoke, placing a casual arm round her shoulders as he sat down. ‘Still, I suppose it’s no surprise that she likes you; they all do.’ She had stiffened at his approach and now turned to him, her face cold.
‘There have been people who didn’t,’ she said coolly as she moved a fraction of an inch away from him, ‘and please take your arm away, Alex. We’re alone now, there’s no need to act.’
‘Is that what I’m doing?’ A certain inflexion in his voice had changed now, its tone deeper and with a trace of iron in its depths. ‘I can’t put a friendly arm around you now?’
‘No.’ And you’re not going to put me in the wrong again, she thought silently as she stared coldly into the handsome face inches away from her own.
‘Why so hostile, Fabia?’ His body hadn’t moved an inch but in some subtle way it seemed more menacing now than affectionate. ‘I’m getting a little tired of the constant assumption that I’m only capable of having one thing on my mind.’
‘I’m not assuming anything,’ she said quickly, ‘but as far as I’m concerned you made the suggestion that you employ me for a specific task and nothing else. Not a foot or a toe out of place, I think you said? Well, that works both ways.’
‘Does it, indeed?’ He turned in the seat to stare straight into her face, his eyes slanted dangerously. ‘What a bossy little female you are, my pet.’ As he leaned towards her he moved his arms and body in such a way that she found herself pinned against the sofa so that she couldn’t move, his hard rigid body trapping her as his face moved down towards hers.
She had expected a hard fierce kiss to follow through on the act of dominance, but instead she found his lips brushing down on hers, tracing the outline of her face with light feathery kisses in between parting her lips tantalisingly and circling her ears with his hot clean breath. It was impossible to stop the flood of desire that began to rise as he continued the sensual teasing game. She could feel every inch of his steel-hard frame against her melting softness and tried desperately to hide the quivering response the practised seduction was bringing forth, hating herself for her weakness at the same time as she wanted to moan her pleasure against his hard face.