But after a while he recovered from the anguish of his thoughts, and tenderly kissed her before, having to pause to clear his throat, he went on.
'To get back to that night. I never intended to go to the Drurys party.'
'You didn't?'
He shook his head. 'After hearing you reject Drury, I was sure you wouldn't be going either. And after the way we'd parted, I was telling myself that even if you were going, I was sure I wasn't interested.'
'You'd got the hump?'
'Cheeky witch—you'd given it to me!'
'I'm dreadful—aren't I?' asked Sorrel, loving him with all her being.
'Quite, quite dreadful,' he agreed, kissing her again purely because he could not resist the temptation of her lips.
'But you came to that party just the same?'
'You'd got me roped and tied,' he owned openly, to her delight. 'I had no intention of going, as I said, but as that evening wore on and I found myself pacing the floor of my home, I discovered I was looking for ways of assaulting that barrier you had erected, so that I might yet get through to the real you.' His eyes were gentle on her as he said, 'My thoughts were turning to how you'd turned out to be so vastly different from the way I'd always imagined you.'
'It was only on the surface,' Sorrel thought she had better mention. His smiling look told her she had no need, that he had seen through her, as he went on:
'To my mind, then; with you acting in an exact opposite way from all my expectations—the hour getting later and later if I was going to put in an appearance—it seemed to me that far from you not being at that party, if you were running true to your new form, then regardless of Drury having proposed and been turned down, you were, at that moment, right there within a few minutes of a fast car drive away.'
'I only went because Rod said his parents' happiness might be dimmed a little if they suspected he was low because…' Sorrel broke off, her eyes smiling as she asked, 'You came to that party because you thought I might be there?'
He nodded. .'And wished I'd stayed at home,' he owned, 'when for my pains you told me how dearly you loved the man who was paying your rent.'
'Oh,' said Sorrel, 'I still haven't told you about Mr Ollerenshaw.'
'You don't have to,' he said promptly. 'If the old gentleman provided for you in his will, then I don't need you to tell me that he did so because you were just you with him, with no thought in you of any possible gain there might be at the end of it.'
Tears brimmed in her eyes at his trust in her. 'Oh, Ellis,' she said huskily. 'Mr Ollerenshaw left his daughter well provided for, I promise you. Only…' his look said he did not want to hear any more, but when he saw that it seemed important to Sorrel to tell him everything, he let her continue, 'Cynthia has no idea how to handle money, so although he left her and her children most of his fortune, he tied it up so that she can't get it all at once.'
'But your nest-egg you could have right away?' Ellis suggested, seeing without her having to tell him why it was that she was like a red rag to a bull where Cynthia Armitage was concerned.
'Mr Ollerenshaw knew that if he didn't tie it up so that Cynthia received so much every quarter, within a few years, there would be nothing left. The poor dear man,' Sorrel went on quietly, 'he worked so hard to amass his fortune, and had so little rest in his ailing years. But had it not been for him leaving a note in his will saying that if I didn't accept his gift he wouldn't rest easy in his grave then…'
'When the Armitage woman kicked up rough, you would have given it up,' said Ellis, seeming to know her as well as she knew herself.
She nodded, 'Not that it would have done Cynthia or the children any good. There was also a proviso that if I didn't accept, then the money was to be used to research the mating habits of the common fieldmouse.'
'They seem to be coping quite well without his money,' commented Ellis. And having observed her while she had been telling him what she had, he said quietly, 'It's obvious to me that you were fond of him— more fond, I should say, than that apology he had for a daughter.'
'She never showed him any affection that I saw,' agreed Sorrel quietly, 'and I lived with them for…'
'You lived with them? In the same house as that woman?' questioned Ellis, as though the very idea appalled him.
'It wasn't so bad,' Sorrel understated. 'At least— well—oh, how can I lie to you, darling?' she sighed. 'It was foul most of the time, but…'
'Why the hell did you stay there?' he interrupted, angry, but only for her, Sorrel knew. 'Were you employed as live-in social secretary of something? Were you…' Suddenly he stopped, and reading his look, Sorrel said:
'There's so much we don't know about each other, isn't there?'
His hand caressed her face again. 'So much, my darling,' he agreed. 'Though for my part, there's not much of interest in those void years without you.' He looked lovingly at her then, and asked, 'You trust me, my love?'
'Completely,' she replied unhesitatingly, and was promptly on the receiving end of his kiss.
'My beloved Sorrel,' he breathed, checking the rising passion in him to tenderly kiss her cheek. We've so much wasted time to make up, yet I'm filled with such a longing to touch you all the time, in case this is just some marvellous dream the gods will snatch away from me, that I'm having difficulty in keeping my hands off you.'
'I shan't have the smallest objection to raise if you want to keep your arm around me,' Sorrel replied solemnly.
'You're being forward again,' teased Ellis in return, 'and I love it.'
Then all teasing went from him, as he kissed her again, his hands caressing her breasts, passion mounting once more, so that when he broke his kiss and looked deeply into her eyes, Sorrel was all at sea with the emotion of wanting him.
'When you—touch me—like that,' she said chokily, 'I don't think—I want to talk at all.'
The same need in him was unmistakable from the fire in his eyes. But he did not kiss her again, but told her, 'Never stop wanting me, as all these years I've wanted you, my Sorrella.'
No question of lack of trust on either side then, Sorrel guessing he was trying to cool the temperature a little, rested her head against his shoulder.
'Would you have gone on wanting me, but doing nothing about it, had we not bumped into each other accidentally that night at the Drurys'?' she asked.
'Probably,' he replied, which had her raising her puzzled head to look at him. For the Ellis she knew had always been a man who went after what he wanted. 'But,' he added, 'in answer to the question I can see burning in your eyes—I was of the opinion that I'd already lost you for ever. I thought,' he ended, to make her eyes go shooting wide, 'that you were happily married to someone else.'
'You thought…' she gasped, staring at him.
'I was certain of it,' he nodded. 'So certain that when this beautiful cool creature walked into the Drurys' drawing room on the night I'd gone to discuss some business, I was shattered. When Neville Drury and I went to his study, my mind was never less on business. All I could think was that my little Sorrel had come a long way from the beautiful teenager I'd fallen in love with. I couldn't get over the fact that you seemed to be going steady with Rod Drury. But most of all, the one thought that kept returning was, why the hell weren't you wearing a wedding ring.'
'But what made you think I was married!' Sorrel exclaimed.
'You never contemplated marrying anyone?' he asked.
Vigorously she shook her head. 'Never,' she said. 'After you sacked me—when I recovered…' she broke off as she saw Ellis frown as though he did not like to remember what his getting rid of her had done to her. Quickly she went on, 'I went to work in the next village for Cynthia Armitage. She wanted a nanny for…'
'Nanny? You went to work as a nanny?' Ellis exclaimed. Then as a kind of groan escaped him, his arm firmed about her shoulders, as he said tortuously, 'Oh God—all this time…' which meant little to her. Though it became clearer as he went on, 'I thought, right up until the time you told
me you'd never had a child, that those two children I saw you with were yours.'
'Mine?' it was her turn to exclaim. And as she remembered, 'But you only thought it was me you saw with the children that day you had business in Kinglingham!'
'With or without those pale streaks of natural gold in your hair, my love,' he said softly, 'I should know you anywhere.' But he was to make her eyes go huge, her face astonished, when he went on to reveal, 'It was not in Kinglingham that I saw you, but in Salford Foley.'
'You were—actually in Salford Foley!'
Ellis nodded, his mouth quirking as he said, 'And not on business.'
'You came to—see me?' Staggered, she brought out what her intelligence told her.
Again he nodded, though that suggestion of a smile had gone from him, and his face was serious as he told her, 'I hadn't quite made my mark in the business world then, but I was on my way up—I just couldn't wait to come for you any longer.'
'You…' her voice got lost in shock, but she recovered sufficient vocal power to squeak, 'you came—for me!'
'I was hoping with everything in me that I hadn't left it too late,' he confirmed.
'Oh, Ellis,' Sorrel cried. 'Why didn't you come and speak to me!'
'I couldn't,' he replied. 'I'd driven to Salford Foley with half of me knowing I was a fool to pin my hopes on the memory I'd carried with me for five years of you fervently vowing that you would always love me. The moment I saw you on the front lawn of your parents' home, one child tugging at your skirts, a baby in your arms being handled so expertly you just had to be its mother, I was convinced my attitude had killed all the love you had for me stone dead, and that you'd soon afterwards married, and had those babies you'd scared the hell out of me by mentioning that last but one time we met.'
Winded by what he had told her, all Sorrel was capable of was to stare at him, stunned, for long, long moments. She recalled how often Cynthia Armitage had told her to 'take those brats from under my feet'. How many were the times, if the weather was fine and sometimes when it wasn't, she had walked pushing both children to her parents' home in the next village. The incident of Arabella pulling on her skirt on the front lawn of her parents' home, she could not remember, but that Ellis had been that close, and she had not known, was staggering. That he had come there specially to collect her rocked her.
'But—but,' she was trying to surface. And, 'Oh, Ellis,' she cried again, 'if only you'd just said "Hello" you would soon have discovered…'
'I was in a hell of a state,' he confessed. 'I didn't want to believe what my eyes were telling me—that you were happily married, and had popped in to visit your mother with your children for an afternoon cup of tea. When I heard the little girl try to get your attention by calling you "Mummy", I just had to believe it. My foot went down on the accelerator—I don't remember that drive back to London.'
Sorrel was quiet for a moment or two, then, 'Oh,' she groaned, that same tortured note there that Ellis had used, as she remembered, and told him as she recalled it, 'Arabella was always a perverse child. Her phase of calling me "Mummy", despite all correction, went on for an age.' Another despairing sound for what might have been left her, as she added, 'It only stopped when Cynthia refused to let her out of her room until she got it right, on the day Arabella took to calling her "Nanny".'
'Perishing child,' said Ellis, but without heat, as with another loving look at Sorrel, he leaned over to kiss and to hold her.
Flushed and never more happy, Sorrel pulled back a breathless few minutes later, to ask, the passion of her feelings at that moment threatening to come between her and what she wanted to know:
'Are you saying that you always intended to marry me, even while you were—throwing me out of your flat that day?'
'God, don't remind me,' he groaned. 'I knew before that first time we kissed that I loved you.'
'You did!' she asked, her eyes going wide again in her surprise, remembering the excitement that day he had first kissed her.
'But what I also knew,' he said, taking out a moment to give her surprised mouth a featherlight kiss, before pulling back and going firmly on as though he thought he owed her an explanation for all the heartbreak she had been through, 'was that I had to cool it.'
'Because you didn't want to marry me?' she asked.
'I desperately wanted to marry you,' Ellis contradicted, 'but I was being ridden by ambition. A wife, children, would have to come first with me—I couldn't take the risk of our marriage turning sour, of our love turning to hate—of our marriage ending in divorce.'
Suddenly Sorrel was seeing how on the right track she had been in her thoughts during that long sleepless night after- Ellis had ordered her out of his flat eight years ago.
'You mean the way your parents' love ended?' she questioned, and felt his arm tighten about her shoulders.
'You've remembered what I told you about my father having that same fire of ambition and how he never gave a thought when he fell in love that marriage, starting a family, meant there would never be any money to get his plans off the ground?'
Sorrel nodded. 'Is that why you got—rid—of me, because…'
'I grew up watching the love my parents had change into hatred,' he told her, the love in his eyes for her healing the memory of that rejection the word 'rid' had brought. 'Life in that house became one constant row— I couldn't let that happen to us. Yet what was I to do? You were seventeen, and I was in hock up to my ears at the bank and needing for years to plough everything I earned back into the business. You wanted commitment then, and I loved you too much to marry you and to risk our love turning into hatred—to risk waking up one morning and finding that, now you were married to me, the laughter that had always been in your eyes was suddenly no longer there.'
There was no thought of reproach in her when he had finished speaking, only a feeling that she would have been better able to bear that rejection had she known, as the words slipped from her:
'Oh, Ellis, how I wish you'd told me all this at the time!'
'It wouldn't have done any good to tell you any of it, sweetheart,' he said quietly. 'We'd already gone too far.' Tenderly then, he kissed her brow. Then he was saying, 'While I was able to part from you with just a few chaste kisses, I thought I could handle it until such time as I was in a position to marry you. But, once we'd gone past that stage of chaste kisses…'
'That day I came to your flat because I'd left my keys at home,' Sorrel remembered.
'Exactly,' he said. 'There you were, already talking of babies, of marriage, of us living together. I had to stop you. Had to get you out of my flat, and fast, because having started to make love to you, I wanted you so desperately then, that I knew if I couldn't get you out, within minutes I would be weakening, and taking you.'
'I thought you'd stopped wanting me!'
His mouth quirked, his look gentle, he shook his head. 'How little you knew, my innocent,' he said softly. 'The anguish you caused me, young woman!'
'I—never—knew,' she whispered, and saw Ellis's face fall into solemn lines as he went on to explain.
'While you remained unawakened, I was able to hold my physical need for you in check. But that day, after you'd gone, I was in a cold sweat realising now you'd shown that you wanted me as much as I wanted you—I was still remembering the teenager who had been all woman in my arms—I just had to know that there was now no going back to chaste kisses. That for both our sakes, I had to be tough.'
'So you sacked me,' said Sorrel, knowing that, whatever it had cost them both, he had been right to do what he had. For, try as they might, she saw that once having tasted the delights of fired passion, there would be little chance of any further kisses, remaining chaste. Ellis, more worldly than she, had been able to see that.
His hand came to caress down the side of her face, such a tenderness in his eyes for her as she had never expected to see, 'I had to let you think I didn't care,' he murmured.
'Is that why you straight away started dating Jen
ny Pearson?'
'Was she the girl who lived in your village?' he asked, obviously having forgotten her name, but the answer to her question there in that he had chosen to date a girl who came from a few streets away.
'You got engaged to Wenda Sykes,' she suddenly remembered.
'Without love,' Ellis reassured her again. 'It happened a year after I'd been forced to face the fact that I'd lost you for ever. It caused no pain when I discovered how she managed to afford a different model outfit each time I saw her.'
'You don't think…'
'If you're going to refer to the money that pays for your clothes, don't,' he told her, his face momentarily stern. 'I'll admit I hated not knowing who was paying your rent,' he said, his stern expression leaving, 'but once I knew that—forgive me, darling—that it was not for favours granted, I was hoping with all I had that from somewhere you would find a little of that trust I once crucified, to tell me all there was to know.'
'You wanted my trust?'
'Desperately,' he replied. 'I tried all I could to beat down that high fence you'd erected, tried hard to gain your confidence, to get you to unlock that door of trust—but you weren't having any. I was ready to beg for your trust,' he admitted unashamedly.
'Oh, darling,' Sorrel cried, 'you wanted my trust that badly?'
'I hoped that if I could once again get you to trust me, there might be a chance of getting you to care for me again,' he confessed, taking her hand up to his mouth to tenderly kiss the back of it. 'That's why,' he went on after a moment, 'when I could easily have discovered the answers to the mysteries that surrounded you by going to Salford Foley and asking your parents about you, about the children I'd seen you with, and this sophisticated woman you were trying to be, I stopped myself. I wanted you to tell me—it was important to me that you did.'
'So that—if I told you myself—you would know that I trusted you,' whispered Sorrel, seeing in her mind's eye how casually he would have approached her parents, seeing too, how just like other parents, they wouldn't be able to resist showing off a little about their offspring, and how inside a very few minutes, Ellis would have got from them all that he wanted to know.
Façade Page 16