Crescendo

by Charlotte Lamb

  Now she faced that and knew Gideon was right. For all the hard gloss he had once used to cover his lack of inner feeling, Gideon was still one of the most brilliant pianists of his age, and since he had gained a new ability to interpret the music with passion and understanding, no doubt he would climb even higher. She had seen the beginning of that climb during their marriage.

  Slowly she fell asleep, and in the morning she picked up Meg and Emma and smiled at them be­fore she put them away on the top shelf of her ward­robe. One day some other little girl would play with them. It would not be her. They had been her com- panions in a lonely world which she no longer in­habited.

  Dressed in blue jeans and a brief blue T-shirt, she went down and found Gideon cooking tomatoes and bacon. He glanced sideways at her and she met his eyes with a cool and level stare.

  'Why haven't you gone?' she demanded.

  'Breakfast is ready,' he said as if she hadn't spoken. Marina saw that that was how he meant to play it, ignoring her requests for him to go, imper­vious to her hostility and anger.

  'I meant what I said. Our marriage is over.'

  'It hasn't even started. Pour the coffee.'

  'Where's Grandie now?' Although she asked the' question irritably she was pouring coffee and sitting down. Sunshine streamed into the room and Ruffy sniffed hungrily, his tail wagging as he contemplated the prospect of delicious bacon rinds in a minute.

  'You wait for it,' Gideon told him, placing the plate in front of her. Seating himself opposite, he eyed his own breakfast hungrily. 'I'm ravenous—I don't know about you.' He glanced up. 'Grandie has walked down to the village.'

  Marina looked back at him in surprise. 'Gone to the village?'

  'Why shouldn't he?' Gideon bent over his plate and ate with obvious enjoyment. His shirt lay open at the collar, revealing the strong line of his brown throat and the first scattering of dark hairs on the deep chest. A wave of black hair fell along his cheek and she had to fight down an impulse to push it back into place. She dared not touch him.

  Grandie went to the village every day, of course, to shop and chat to people, but it surprised her that he should go out this morning, leaving her alone with Gideon again. Grandie admired success. Gideon had been one of his most successful pupils and he had been proud of him.

  Looking up, Gideon caught her eye and said mockingly, 'Close your mouth. Are you catching flies? Eat your breakfast—it's delicious. I'm becom­ing a very good cook.' He knew very well why she was looking so taken aback and it amused him. The gleam in the black eyes made her so angry she stiff­ened and snapped forcefully:

  'Why don't you go where you're wanted? I don't want you here.'

  'Too bad,' he shrugged, and bent over his meal again.

  After a furious pause Marina ate her own break­fast and found that this morning the smell of food did not make her nauseated. She was hungry and she finished the meal without another word. Gideon cut up the bacon rinds and fed them to Ruffy, who wagged his tail as he watched. Gideon scratched his head and Marina watched the long fingers moving seductively on the dog's white coat with a dryness in her throat.

  Gideon looked up and she felt her face burn. Hur­riedly she turned away and began to clear the table.

  If she stayed here with him always around she was going to be fighting a losing battle—she faced that angrily. Gideon moved beside her, out of the line of her vision, and her blood responded to every beat of his heart, every breath he took.

  She made herself continue doing the washing up although she was aware of everything he did, every move he made. When she had finally finished she turned to walk to the door and Gideon stepped in front of her; not touching her, just hairing her way, smiling down at her with those straight black brows lifting in mocking amusement.

  'Get out of my way,' she said hoarsely.

  'Make me.' He said that with enjoyment, his eyes alight.

  She put her hands against his chest to push him away, but that was a mistake, because she felt the trembling start inside her as soon as she touched him, and she had to snatch her hands away because of what they might do; the weakness they might un­veil too clearly for him.

  Looking away from his observant stare she said thickly: 'How can you do this? Go back to your mistress, I don't want you.'

  'I haven't got a mistress, and you do want me,' he said very softly, watching her.

  She lifted her head to look at him furiously. 'Is the affair with Diana over? How sad. I'm sure you'll find someone else.'

  'I'm sure I could,' he agreed casually, and that deepened her rage with him. His complacent smile made her want to hit him.

  'It won't be me,' she snapped.

  'No?' He put his head to one side and ran an ex­ploratory eye over her from the bright tip of her head to her feet, taking his time, making his en­joyment only too clear. 'Didn't you enjoy being my mistress, Marina?'

  She felt red colour rush up her face. She hit him so hard it made her hand sting. For a second Gideon looked at her with rage, his black eyes obsidian, furious, then he took her by the shoulders and bent her backwards, despite her helpless struggles. She turned her head away to avoid the searching mouth and felt it moving along her exposed neck. Her trembling increased and with it so did her anger.

  'Let me go, you swine!' she cried harshly.

  Without answering, Gideon caught her chin in one hand, his fingers biting into her, turning her face up towards him, then his lips were heatedly opening her own and the ground under her feet seemed to shake. Fire streaked along her nerves. Her eyes shut tight. She felt her body arch towards him and then his hands ran sensuously over her back, pressing her body closer, the stroking caress of their movements wiping out all memory inside her.

  Her small hands moved up to clutch at his shirt and the reality of his body under her lingers made the blood sing in her veins. No pleasure her hands had ever had from their skill on the piano could equal the piercing sweetness she felt as she slid her hands up Gideon's body, deeply aware of the mus­cular hardness of the flesh and sinew beneath her fingertips.

  Her response had speeded up the hammering beat of his heart. His hands moved up under her T-shirt, their cool exploration running up her bare back to close possessively over her small breasts.

  Harshness enveloped her and she abruptly dragged herself away, breathing heavily.

  'Get your hands off me!'

  His face was darkly flushed, his eyes glittering.

  'You want my hands on you,' he muttered thickly, his speech slurred by the pressure of the desire she could read in his intent stare. His eyes closed and opened again, fierceness in them. 'Don't you know what you do to me?'

  'Any woman can do that,' she said savagely, and saw his face whiten.

  'No,' he said unsteadily. 'Nobody else.'

  'Is that what you told Diana?' She gave him a cold, bitter little smile. 'You do it so well, Gideon, a well-rehearsed patter you must have delivered many times before, but this time it isn't going to work. I don't believe a word of it.'

  'It's true,' he broke out with his black eyes fixed on her, a burning intensity in them. 'I love you. With Diana, with everyone else, it was just pleasure —none of them ever made my heart stop the way you do, the way you did the first time I ever set eyes on you.'

  Her eyes widened—she remembered that night, the concert, the party, the adoring women throng­ing around him and hanging on his every word, the black flash of his eyes as he noticed her and the way he held her hand later, smiling down at her with reckless, excited eyes.

  'You were such a baby,' he said in a husky, shaken voice. 'Big innocent eyes and a shy little smile—my God, I wanted you the moment I saw you.'

  Marina remembered all too well the gleaming brilliance of those eyes as they stared at her. Was that what he had been thinking? Had there been desire behind those hard black eyes? He had stood there, tall and elegant in his evening clothes, look- ing at her with exalted amusement, and she had imagined his excitement came from his triumph
during the performance. She had barely dared to lift her head to look at him; the magician whose power­ful hands had made that wonderful music. She had certainly not suspected that while Gideon stared down at her, he had had thoughts like that in his head. It would never have entered her mind. He was right. She had been innocent, naive, unaware of all the sexual complications which Gideon was to teach her.

  'A mistress was all you ever wanted, wasn't it?' she accused, her eyes bitter as she raised them to his face again.

  He read the contempt she was showing him and his mouth twisted wryly as he shrugged those broad shoulders in acceptance of the charge. 'Have you ever seen it from my side of things, Marina? You've met my mother, you know what she's like. From an early age I got dragged around the world like a per­forming monkey, given everything I ever wanted, but always treated more as a toy than a child. My mother suffocated me. I never had a free hour to my­self. I wasn't allowed to breathe unless she gave me permission. I had no friends because she didn't want me to be distracted from my music. My father was shoved aside because he might interfere between me and my mother.'

  She knew all this, had worked it out for herself from what she had observed of his mother and from what Grandie had told her.

  Gideon grimaced, his features set hard in grim disillusionment. 'When I could break away, I did,

  and I determined then that I would never again get seriously involved with another woman during my lifetime.' His eyes flashed as he stared over her head. 'If you let them, women take you over completely —that's what I learnt from my mother. They stifle you, smother you, cling round you like ivy. I de­cided when I grew up that women had their uses but they had to be firmly kept in their place. I learnt to use them, enjoy them and then kick them out of my life when I'd finished with them.'

  She winced at the harsh cruelty of that and he ' watched her face, his own shadowed. 'Yes,' he agreed, 'it isn't pretty. I could lie to you and hide all of that, but I don't want any more secrets between us, Marina. I want you to know what I am, what I've been.'

  There was a grinding ache in the centre of her body, a pain which was as persistent as toothache and far more destructive. She thought she might have it for the rest of her life.

  'I don't want to hear any more,' she said in a flat dry voice. She pulled away from him and turned to the door, but Gideon caught her arm and held her back, his dark eyes fixed on her.

  'Marina,' he muttered huskily, and she flared up in anger.

  'Why don't you leave me alone? I've had enough of you—I hate the sight of you. Go away and stay away!'

  The sharpness of her voice slashed across his face like a whip and his hand dropped away from her. She caught a glimpse of the' pain in his eyes as she stumbled to the door, but she did not care. She

  hoped she had hurt him; it would be a small re­venge for all the agony he had given her in the past.

  She met Grandie as she wandered along the cliff. His bowed figure halted as he set eyes on her and she felt him search her face for some sign which would tell him how she was reacting to Gideon's continued presence.

  'He asked me to give him a chance to talk to you,' he told her anxiously. 'Did I do wrong? I couldn't make him go—he just ignored everything I said.'

  'I realise that,' she said flatly. Gideon was ob­stinate, self-willed, impossible to move when he had set his mind on something.

  'What's happening?' Grandie asked, watching her. 'Is he staying? What are you going to do?'

  'I don't know,' she muttered, her head bent. She had to tell him some time; it might as well be now. Taking a deep breath, she said unsteadily, 'I can't ever be what you want me to be, Grandie. It isn't in me.'

  He stiffened, his hands curling in that useless clawlike way at his side. 'You're brilliant,' he burst out. 'You could be a top artist. If you hadn't met Gideon you would have begun to show what you could do.'

  She shook her head sadly. 'It isn't Gideon.'

  'Yes,' Grandie said furiously. 'Gideon ruined your career, your whole life.'

  'My life, maybe,' she sighed, 'not my career. Sooner or later I'd have had to tell you what I'm telling you now—I'm not cut out for it.'

  'How can you say that?'

  She lifted her pale gleaming head and looked at him with reluctant, sad eyes. 'It's the truth, Gran­die, whether you'll admit it or not. I haven't got the nerve for, the heights. I'd never succeed because I lack whatever it is that drives Gideon and drove you once. I don't even want to become a great concert artist. I hate playing in public, it makes me sick. I love music, but I hate performing, I hate people listening to me.'

  'You haven't even tried yet,' Grandie said fiercely, staring at her as if he wished he could shake some sense into her. 'How do you know how you'd feel once you'd started? We all feel stage fright. We're all aware of being inadequate. Once you start play­ing you'd soon get over that.'

  She shook her head. 'That isn't it, Grandie. Don't you see? I don't want to do it.'

  Grandie wanted her to be a clone of himself; an imitation which could give him the chance to relive his own life, the life he had had snatched away from him by a cruel fate. Grandie had never ceased to resent the loss of his ability. He had been excluded from a world he longed for and he could not believe that Marina could turn her back on that world with­out a single regret.

  'We aren't all the same, Grandie,' she told him gently. 'I'm sorry if I'm disappointing you ...'

  'Disappointing me?' His face was harsh and his eyes shadowed. 'I've given my every waking thought to you since you were born. How can you turn your back on what I know you could be? How can you throw it all away, Marina? You're brilliant. You have a sensitive touch, a great .understanding and feeling for the music. Why waste all that ability?

  What are you going to do with it?' His face tight­ened. 'You're going back to him, after all he's done to you! Don't women ever learn? Gideon is selfish —all great artists are. I don't blame him for that. He lives at a terrific pace and he needs to be able to re­lax and wind down between performances. I wouldn't care what he did, but if he comes between you and your career again I'll never forgive him!'

  'It has nothing to do with Gideon,' she said again.

  'I'm not blind,' Grandie snapped furiously. 'As soon as he appeared down here you started falling for him all over again. Do you think I don't know what was going on between you?' His face was red, his eyes bitter. 'That night I came in and found you in his arms I could see how far he'd got.'

  'He's nothing to do with it,' she repeated on a ris­ing note. She did not want to think about Gideon, let alone talk about him.

  Pushing past Grandie, she ran down the cliff path and turned into the way which led to Spanish Head­land. The wind whipped her hair into tangles and brought a bright colour to her cheeks which gave a deceptive glow to her small face.

  She stood on the sheep-cropped turf and stared out across the sea. Below those blue sun-glinting waves lay savage rocks which could rend and destroy any boat foolish enough to venture into these waters. People could be as deceptive as this—she had had a chart to warn her against Gideon from the start, but she had come to grief, all the same, because she had not taken the warning messages of her intuition seriously.

  Although she had been so very young she had not been blinded by Gideon's looks and charm. She had realised that he was hard, a man used to getting what he wanted, a man with few illusions and a cynical desire for his own way. Passion had under­mined her realisation of his nature. It had taken the bitter lessons which pain could teach to show her that for every hour of pleasure in his arms she would have to pay heavily later.

  A woman like Diana Grenoby could match Gideon because she had as little heart as he did, but Marina had no intention of letting his desire for her lure her back to him. Gideon had told her frankly what the future would hold for her one day. He used women and then kicked them out of his life when he was tired of them. She wasn't going to have that hap­pen to her. He had already hurt her as much as she could
stand.

  She believed he imagined he loved her for the moment. Even Gideon must have been affected by the bitter events of that day when she walked in and found Diana in his arms. She had lost her baby and been seriously ill for a long time. Gideon was not totally hard. He would have been guilty, disturbed. Maybe he had some idea of making reparation for all that had happened. Whatever his reason for tell­ing her he loved her, she would not, could not take it seriously. Gideon did not know what love meant.

  CHAPTER EIGHT

  MARINA heard a grating step behind her and swung, her pale face filled with immediate defiance, expect­ing to see Gideon. The young man behind her looked at her uncertainly, his fair skin flushing. 'Oh hello,' he muttered, not quite meeting her eyes.

  'Hallo,' she said, relaxing. 'You haven't gone back to Birmingham yet, then?'

  Tom Hutton shook his head, turning from her to look out across the sea in his turn.

  'Still staying in the village?' Marina asked.

  He nodded, then cleared his throat in an endear­ingly embarrassed fashion. 'Sorry I mistook your friend for your father the other day.'

  She remembered Gideon's deliberate kiss, timed for Tom Hutton to witness, the hesitation with which Gideon had tried to find a way of making her stay away from him. She could have laughed if she had not been so angry with him. He had been trapped, unable to say openly why he objected to her friendly meeting with Tom. So, being Gideon, he had attempted to put a stop to any relationship by kissing her so that Tom should see it.

  She smiled at Tom. 'That's all right. He is much older than me.'