With This Ring

by Jean Saunders

  “It’s far from convenient,” he said, in a hard voice. “We’ve barely begun here.” He gestured to the piles of notes they had started to assemble. She wouldn’t be swayed.

  “I’m sorry. I’ve given you sufficient to get a clear picture of James’s early years. I hadn’t anticipated that you would want me to help write the book. I thought you merely wanted background information. If there’s anything further I can tell you, I’m sure I can send it to you from London.”

  He stared at her, unsmiling, not speaking. His gaze seemed to penetrate her very bones. It unnerved her. It wasn’t sexual so much as possessive at that moment, telling her potently that she should not, could not, do this. That she belonged here, to him, for as long as he wanted her. The message he sent out was as clear as if he had shouted it from the rooftops. She flinched back from it. Nobody owned her, nor ever would.

  “You don’t need me, Claude.” Her voice was more resolute, dragged past the dryness in her throat that she wouldn’t let him sense. She held her chin high. “You can manage perfectly well without me —

  His fist slammed down on the desk so hard and so fast, Tania gave a little gasp of alarm. It was as if he had struck her. She felt the pain of contact as sharply as if he’d rammed the fist into her face. She stepped back a pace as he stood up. He didn’t move away from the desk, and outlined against the dense mist outside the window, she had the impression of a dark devil surrounded by swirling vapour. If she had been unnerved before, she was doubly so now.

  “I need you,” he grated. “Haven’t you been listening to a word I’ve said all this time? I need you. Henri needs you. James needs you —”

  “James is dead.” The pricking behind her eyelids as she mouthed the words made her swallow. He was despicable, using weapons against which she was helpless. Why did he do this to her? Was she the only woman in the world who could sate his vanity right now? Did he need her so badly to add to his collection?

  “It’s because James is dead that I need you,” he said coldly. “I need your help. You know that. But if your feelings aren’t as filial as you would have me believe, and since you obviously care nothing about my needs, then what of Henri? The child has grown very fond of you. He is making excellent progress with his English, because he wants to please you so much.”

  “There are proper tutors who would do as well. Don’t use Henri as a kind of blackmail,” she said angrily. “First James, and now the boy. Are you proud of yourself for your devious methods of getting a woman to stay with you? I’m surprised you resort to such crudity. It’s hardly subtle, is it?”

  He was around the desk so fast she had no chance to move out of his way. His arms closed around her, pinning her to him so that she couldn’t breathe. She felt faint. She was going to die here, in this dark embrace. Claude’s words came to her through a fog of panic.

  “I need no devious methods to hold a woman in my arms,” he said harshly. “I’m holding you now, and I’ll hold you as long as I want to. No-one will interrupt us. I can do as I wish with you.”

  Tania looked into his dark, angry face. “Then do it,” she mouthed at him. “Prove your brute strength if you must. You’re holding me physically, but that’s all. Emotionally, you don’t even touch me. Are you capable of knowing the difference?”

  There was total silence for a moment, and Tania prayed he would never know what it cost her to say what she did. Emotionally, her spirit cried out to him not to be like this. To be gentle, considerate, to want her for herself, not just because she was a woman in the usual sense of the word. She wanted to be his woman, his, exclusively, eternally, but she stared him out, her amber eyes darkened with fear and determination. If he had ever doubted that she had as much spirit as her brother James, even if it was channelled in different directions, he believed it now.

  He let her go. She stood with her arms taut at her sides. She knew she had won in a battle of wills. Unbelievably, she had won. He could have taken her there and then. Proved his male superiority once and for all. She could see by the tightness of the muscles working in his neck and jaw that it had cost him a great effort of will not to do so. He wasn’t used to being turned down. Still less to being faced with a young woman defying all his seduction, and telling him scornfully to get on with it if he must, because it wouldn’t mean a thing to her.

  Tania felt her whole body tremble. It would have meant the sun and stars, but not this way … not this way.

  “I won’t go immediately, Claude.” She couldn’t stop the huskiness in her voice. “I don’t mean to leave you entirely in the lurch, and it would be best to let Henri realise gradually that I can’t stay here for ever.”

  She held her breath, praying that he wouldn’t demand to know why not. She was weary of battle. She couldn’t begin all over again. He still said nothing, seating himself back at his desk.

  “I’ll stay another month,” she went on. “I think that’s a fair offer, don’t you?”

  “Two months instead of six?”

  “I never promised to stay for six months. You know that.” She wouldn’t lose her temper again. “It’s the best I can do. Take it or leave it. Only, please, if I stay, it must be strictly on a business basis from now on. Strictly, Claude.”

  “I see. I’m expected to agree to conditions as well now, am I? Do you make such impossible demands of your David Lee? And does he agree to them?” His tone said he couldn’t believe any red-blooded man would be so emasculated.

  “I don’t need to,” Tania said bluntly. “I’m comfortable with David. That’s a word I can hardly apply to my relationship with you!”

  “Comfortable!” Claude said explosively. “That’s the last way I would want to describe my relationship with a woman! I can be comfortable with an old sofa or a favourite pair of slippers! God help me if I can’t make a woman feel anything more than comfortable when I make love to her!”

  She hadn’t been talking about making love. It hadn’t entered into her relationship with David, but she saw no reason to give him that little bit of ammunition against David.

  “Do you agree or not?” Tania demanded to know. “One more month on my terms, or nothing.”

  Claude leaned back in his chair. He accepted too readily. His hands spread wide, as if in total capitulation.

  “I agree! How can I do otherwise? But after all this trauma, I think we’ll take the day off. I don’t feel like working. I shall go and find some amusement elsewhere. The château is becoming a little inhibiting today. I’m sure you can find plenty to do. Go out with the others, or write to your David.”

  He taunted her, but she let it pass. She wouldn’t think what his other amusements might be. She had seen some of them at the party, beautiful, olive-skinned girls who would probably be incredulous that she, a mere English girl, would refuse all that Claude Girard had to offer. She left the study abruptly, her head truly throbbing now. The tension of facing him after the late night was really getting to her, and instead of going out anywhere, Tania decided to have a lie-down for an hour. She would be bothering no-one, and she sought the serenity of her room as if it was a sanctuary.

  One more month. One more month with Claude, and then she need never see him again. Her life would be as it was before. The slow, silent tears trickled down her cheeks and into her mouth as she lay with her eyes closed on her bed. She tasted them, salty, bitter, and knew that nothing would ever be the same for her, ever again. She knew the pain of love, and it seemed she was destined never to know the pleasures.

  * * *

  It was strange to be the only person having lunch at the château that day. The vast place seemed to echo with reproach, as if in protest against the English girl who dared to thwart its heir. Tania was waited on by the château servants, thinking foolishly she could just as easily have cooked up something for herself in Claude’s kitchen. She would never dare to invade the main kitchens, but in Claude’s quarters, she would have felt less conspicuous. The thing that stopped her was that he could very well ha
ve come back and found her there, and she had no wish to appear domesticated in his own kitchen. It took very little for him to see it as a submission.

  She wouldn’t write to David, Tania thought recklessly. She would phone him. Madame had been telling her for weeks to phone home whenever she wished, and she had done so on very few occasions. She would phone Lance too, and let him know that she wouldn’t be staying over here for six months, regardless of what Claude Girard had told him! She wouldn’t give a definite date. She was a little cautious. Maybe he’d try and persuade her that she should stay, since Claude was paying. Men had a strange habit of closing ranks, Tania had discovered. It was best to keep it vague, and just prepare the way.

  At least David was overjoyed when she told him she wouldn’t be staying in France until Christmas.

  “Thank goodness for that, darling,” he said enthusiastically. “Christmas wouldn’t be the same without you. You’ll come to us as usual this year, then, won’t you? Mother will be pleased when I tell her.”

  She liked David’s mother. Small, round and grey, complacently filling her days with an endless round of knitting for the four grandchildren, and obviously hoping that Tania would be the next addition to the family, to provide more work for Mrs Lee’s perpetual-motion knitting needles. Tania couldn’t repress a shiver as the inevitability of life with David was loosely translated to mean life with Mother as well …

  “I expect so,” Tania said brightly.

  “I’ll have to tell her, Tania. It’s not fair to leave it until the last minute. You know she likes to plan well ahead. There are the puddings to make, and the cake —”

  “For goodness’ sake, it’s only just September.” She knew she sounded irritable and couldn’t help it. She hated such long-term commitments on such trivial matters. The real, important things in life, like sharing two lives, were another matter. Christmas puddings could be bought at the supermarket at a minute’s notice. She knew she was nitpicking with David, and that it wasn’t his fault she alternated between ecstasy and despair, with the emphasis on the latter right now, she thought gloomily.

  Suddenly realising there was a little silence at the other end of the line, and imagining so clearly David’s look of surprised hurt at her snapping, Tania spoke more gently.

  “David, it’s very kind of your mother to invite me, and I promise I’ll let you know in good time what my plans are,” she hedged, hardly knowing why she did so.

  “It’s not just kind, darling. You know Mother sees you as practically one of the family already,” David said boisterously.

  Tania stared at the phone. He shouldn’t have said already, her brain harped at her. As if there was never any doubt… Tania suddenly saw herself drawn into Mother Lee’s cosy little afternoon tea meetings, and being urged to serve on Mother Lee’s boring committees, like the dutiful wives of David’s brothers. Sucked into a close-knit web of old-homestead living. The Lee wives didn’t pursue careers. Their careers were in being wives and mothers, and more significantly, Lee daughters-in-law! David wouldn’t exactly put pressure on her to resign from the company, but the pressure would be there just the same. From all sides, warm and smothering, like treacle.

  “David, I’ll have to go now,” Tania said in quick short tones, because until this minute she had never seen things so clearly, nor questioned her future so dispassionately, and it alarmed her. Had she really been drifting along with the tide towards a marriage in which she wouldn’t be merely David’s wife, but also part of the Family, one of the buzzing little workers, the centre of which was the Queen Bee, Mother Lee!

  She shook herself, wondering if she was going mad.

  “All right, darling.” David was as agreeable as ever.

  How had she ever become involved with someone so luke-warm! The thought raced around in her head, and she hated herself for it, knowing that it was only by comparison …

  “Hey,” he said suddenly. “I miss you. Come home soon.”

  “Goodbye, David. I’ll be in touch.” She slammed down the phone. Her eyes smarted. She heard his words still ringing in her ears like afterthoughts, the little ritualistic finale to a telephone conversation. Usually he added a bit more. Love you. Miss you. See you soon.

  Tania pushed the hair back from her forehead where it lay in heavy damp strands. The day was oddly oppressive after the glorious summer sunshine, and it was certainly taking its toll on her. What on earth was wrong with her? She was seeing shadows in every corner, picking up nuances in a voice that weren’t really there. If she were the crying kind, she would have felt like weeping. It was all so illogical. If she examined her reasons for snubbing David, and Claude too, she could hardly make sense of them. A psycho-analyst would have a field-day with her. Here she was, nostalgic over the fact that she never had the type of family who gave her their time, their presence, and when it was offered to her on a plate, in the shape of the loving Lees, she rejected it with horror. Just what did she want?

  The answer to that was too uncomfortable to think about, and she wouldn’t let herself. There was no future for her with Claude Girard. Not unless he changed totally, gave up his lifestyle and the danger it contained … but then he wouldn’t be the same man. Oh, damn him for getting under her skin the way he had, Tania thought angrily. It wasn’t love. It was infatuation, a kind of repulsive attraction for someone who fascinated even while he threatened. There was enough psychological evidence for that kind of attraction! She wouldn’t think of him any more.

  By the time the rest of the Girards came back from their day out, Tania was feeling more relaxed. A long bath and a read on her bed had let the tangled tension unwind a little. A breeze had lifted some of the heavy still air, and she could laugh at some of her foolish fancies. She belonged to no-one. She could do whatever she wished, go where she liked. Instead of the fact dragging her down, it should uplift her, exhilarate her. She was no clinging vine, dependent on a man’s whims. The book she read echoed the same sentiments, and by the time she dressed for dinner, Tania felt more able to listen to Henri’s excited tales of Biarritz and the lovely day out they had had.

  “You should have come with us, Tania,” Monique smiled at her. “It was so good by the sea —”

  “Denis came too,” Henri interrupted. “He met us at the café, and Maman blushed to see him.”

  “Don’t be silly, Henri,” Monique laughed, but Tania saw that she was blushing now, her olive skin faintly pink.

  “It was the unexpectedness of it,” Madame put in, her eyes twinkling. “I told Denis he should surprise Monique more often.”

  Her meaning was clear. They all wanted Monique to marry again, and she and Denis seemed ideally suited, and were obviously in love. But Monique held back, probably because of Henri’s handicap, refusing to name the day. Couldn’t she see that it was the best thing for them all, and that Henri adored his future stepfather?

  “Where is Claude?” Madame said in surprise. “Isn’t he here?”

  Tania flushed now. “He went out before lunch. I haven’t seen him since, Madame.”

  Right on cue, Alphonse appeared in the room to say that Monsieur Claude had just telephoned to say he was dining out with a friend, and wouldn’t be back until late that evening.

  Tania wondered just who the friend was, and knew it was no business of hers. Neither did she have the right to feel the burning stab of jealousy, when she had rejected every advance Claude made to her. He was a normal, healthy man. If she didn’t want him, there were plenty of women who would. The sudden emptiness inside her made her almost dizzy. She had eaten too small a lunch, she thought determinedly. She needed food. Not for a single second would she admit that the hunger she felt was of a more basic, desperate kind.

  * * *

  There was no chance of hearing when Claude’s car came back to the château late that night. Tania’s room was at the rear of the building, and she would not be so foolish as to wait up, or lie rigidly awake in her bed, listening for the click of his light in the silen
ce, or the soft pad of footsteps. Even through the thick château walls, the silence magnified small sounds, especially when someone’s ears were specially attuned for them.

  Whom had he been with until so late, she found herself thinking? Some beautiful, voluptuous woman who would give him all the comfort he needed? Some unknown woman who would have felt all the force of Claude Girard’s undoubted masculinity, and sent him on his way with a reluctance and a sweet store of memories until the next time?

  And she, fool that she was, Tania’s thoughts whispered through her senses in that vulnerable hour of the night, could have known all this. It had been hers for the taking.

  She tossed and turned, finding sleep elusive, impossible. Her throat was dry as sand. She must get a drink of water. The nearest place was Claude’s kitchen. The château corridors were still maze-like to Tania, but she could easily go through his quarters to his kitchen.

  She slid her feet into soft mules and pushed her arms through the sleeves of the Chinese silk robe. The whole château was wrapped in silence now. She closed her door very quietly, crept through the connecting door in the corridor to Claude’s quarters, and by the dim light through the end window, made her way down the stairs to the kitchen. She drank a whole tumblerful of cold water, letting it trickle down her dry throat. Maybe after that she would get some sleep.

  As she made her way back to her room, she suddenly heard sounds that made her heart stop for a minute, and then race on, the blood pounding in her ears. The sounds came from Claude’s room. She stopped outside, listening. Even if the words were indistinct, the tortured mutterings were obvious. And then her heart leapt as she heard her brother’s name.

  “No, no, James, hold on … hold on. Oh God, no, dear God, help us somebody. Help us … James, James …”

  He must be in the grip of some horrific nightmare, Tania thought. Still clinging to the precipice from where her brother had plunged to his death, reliving that terrible day. She hardly realised that her hand was clinging to the door handle, or that she was turning it. She hardly knew how it was that one minute she was standing outside the room, her heart seemingly clenched in as great a nightmare as Claude, and the next, she was inside, moving across to the bed where he writhed and swore furiously at the fates, bathed in gleaming sweat as he threshed about, no longer safe in bed at the Château Girard, but somewhere up there, in the mountains. Though he fought within himself with all the rage of a demented animal, Tania knew he held no fears for her at that moment.