by Penny Jordan
‘Elspeth, don’t be ridiculous.’ He sounded testy and irritated. ‘You know I can’t. I’ve already explained to you. Look, once you come back to London we’ll—’
‘No, Peter,’ she interrupted ruthlessly. ‘Either you spend this weekend here with me, or our relationship’s over.’
There was a silence, and then he blustered, ‘Look, Elspeth, this isn’t like you, and I’m certainly not going to give in to that kind of blackmail. I can’t let Mother down. I can understand that you want me with you.’ Was he actually preening himself because of what she had said? Was he actually enjoying refusing her? ‘We’ll talk about it when you’re in a less emotional frame of mind.’
‘No, Peter,’ she told him steadily. ‘We won’t talk about it, because I’ve just realised we no longer have anything to talk about. It’s over. Goodbye, Peter.’
And she put the receiver down on him before he could say another word.
It was over; she and Peter were no longer a couple. She was no longer almost engaged, committed. Oddly, she felt neither pain nor relief, only a numbing emptiness, an awareness of a great yawning gap where her future had once been. There would be time later to feel hurt, betrayed, maybe even regret and remorse, but she knew already that there was no going back. That smugness she had heard in Peter’s voice, that sureness that he was in the right and that she would see it, that refusal to be aware of her feelings or her needs, had said more than any words. Had there even been a touch of relief behind his smugness when she had thrown that ultimatum at him?
She knew someone who would be pleased to hear that their relationship was over. Peter’s mother had never made any secret of the fact that she didn’t think Elspeth good enough for her only child. No doubt she would far rather see Peter married to some timid, nervous girl whom she could dominate in the same way she had always dominated her husband and son.
She was shivering, Elspeth suddenly realised; and more than that, she felt distinctly odd, quite faint and light-headed.
Somehow or other she made her way back to the kitchen, bumping painfully into the table as she did so, making her way to the sink where she turned on the cold tap and held her wrists beneath its icy flood, hoping the cold water would revive her.
It was the approaching storm that was making her feel so unwell, she told herself stoically, blinking away the tears which had suddenly blurred her vision. Tears of shock, and the pain of discovering that someone she had believed would put her first in his life had actually put her a very poor second. And yet beneath those emotions ran a tiny thread of something else. Relief? Surely not. She had wanted to marry Peter. Less than three days away from him couldn’t have changed her so much that now she no longer did so.
Her head was aching unbearably, so much so that she could hardly think. She raised her hand to massage her temples and stiffened with atavistic fear as the distant hills were suddenly illuminated by a forked dart of lightning.
The storm was coming closer. She felt all her old childhood fear returning, intensified by the emotional trauma of recent events, so that her senses were preternaturally heightened and she was unable to exert her normal firm control over her reactions.
She was actually trembling, she realised as she turned on the tap and tried to pour herself a glass of water.
She felt physically sick from the pressure inside her head; every instinct she possessed urged her to seek sanctuary somewhere safe and dark, somewhere womblike, she reflected analytically, somewhere where she could escape from her physical pain and be safe from the storm. Somewhere where Peter’s defection would no longer hurt—not her heart, she acknowledged sadly, but her pride. It was her pride that was stung by his refusal to put their relationship first. Had she truly loved him? But then she had never… She bit her lip.
Love had never really formed an important part of their relationship. She had liked Peter, admired his determination to succeed in his chosen career, had thought it would be enough for them to have similar goals, similar purposes in life. She had chosen him carefully and she had thought intelligently, and yet the very first time their relationship was tested he had failed her. How would she have felt if she had not made that discovery until after they were married? What was it she really wanted from a man? She closed her eyes, wincing as the thunder rolled closer.
‘Close your eyes and think of something nice,’ her mother had once urged her compassionately during a particularly bad storm. ‘Think of being warm, safe and protected.’
Out of habit more than anything else, she clung to those words now, using them almost like a mantra, but instead of visualising as she normally did somewhere safe and dark where she was protected from the wrath of the storm, the only mental images she had were ones of Carter’s arms holding her, Carter’s arms protecting her, Carter’s voice comforting her.
‘No.’
The protest broke from her lips as she wrenched herself away from the temptation of her own thoughts. Her heart was thumping far too quickly, and not just from fear—or at least not fear of the storm. Was this why she had felt that tiny thread of release at the ending of her relationship with Peter? Because of Carter? Because of a man whom she knew to be untrustworthy, and yet who nevertheless aroused her in ways which she had thought in her ignorance belonged only to teenagers and the fevered imaginations of certain novelists?
Carter—where was he? Why didn’t he come back? The sky had filled with black clouds, the thunder rumbled closer, drawn, she suspected, by the awesome mystery of The Edge—that strange, magical place where locals said no birds ever sang and where Merlin was supposed to haunt the underground caverns.
She shivered violently, the tiny hairs on her arms lifting in frightened awareness of the force of the coming storm. She was trembling so much she could hardly move. When Carter came back— She tensed, remembering how furious he had been with her, how contemptuous. No doubt when he came in and discovered her standing shivering with fright, and all because of a thunderstorm, he would be doubly contemptuous. She caught sight of a bottle of her mother’s elderberry wine standing on the dresser.
Perhaps a glass of that might steady her nerves a little. She walked across the kitchen and on the third attempt managed to pour some of the pale liquid into her glass. The glass she had picked up was the one she had used for her drink of water, and she had perhaps rather overfilled it, she recognised, taking a deep gulp.
The wine was instantly warming, relaxing the tensed muscles of her throat, filling the empty space inside her with pleasant heat. She could almost feel it unlocking her over-tensed nerves, Elspeth decided, carefully carrying both the glass and the bottle over to the table and slumping into one of the chairs.
Common sense told her that she really ought to go upstairs and get into bed, where she could bury her head under the bedclothes and blot out the storm, but she felt strangely reluctant to leave the kitchen; almost as though something was making her stay, making her wait—for what?
For Carter.
She took another quick gulp of the wine, trying desperately to ignore what her own brain was telling her.
Of course she wasn’t waiting for Carter. Why on earth should she be? He meant nothing to her, nothing at all, other than the fact that he might be trying to destroy her parents’ business. That was her only interest in him, of course it was. And if when he had kissed her she had just happened to react…well, then all that proved was that—that he was an extremely seductive and dangerous man, she thought bitterly, staring in some confusion into her almost empty glass.
Had she really drunk that full glass of wine? She could only remember taking the first two gulps. Now the glass was virtually empty. It was true that there was a delicious warm feeling in the pit of her stomach, she acknowledged, focusing with some difficulty.
It was also true that her headache had started to recede a little. Perhaps if she had a little more wine it might go altogether. It seemed extraordinarily difficult to fill up her glass. For some reason it kept on moving. In f
act the entire room was swaying very gently around her, almost as though they were at sea. The threatening crash of the thunder was getting closer. The storm was going to pass right overhead, Elspeth recognised, shivering as her fear broke through the wine-induced haze. She heard someone moaning, a sharp, high-pitched sound, and stared wildly round the kitchen, wondering if she had imagined the noise—and then realised that she herself had made it.
In the corner, Jasper the parrot was whistling to himself, apparently oblivious to the storm. Elspeth winced as lightning tore jaggedly at the sky, and quickly took another deep gulp of her wine. It certainly seemed to be helping; she certainly felt less terror than normal. Her fear was still there, but the wine had distanced her from it. Was she perhaps just a little bit tipsy? she asked herself uneasily, suddenly aware of how very uncoordinated her movements had become. Surely not. She very rarely drank, and she certainly never got—tipsy. But perhaps she had better not drink any more. Peter didn’t approve of women who drank. Tears of self-pity filled her eyes and slid down her face. She tried to brush them away and missed.
The storm was getting closer—too close. She was just beginning to feel the old familiar terror gathering force inside her, when the back door suddenly opened and Carter came in.
She tried to stand up, which she told herself later was her first big mistake. Why on earth she thought she ought to stand up, she had no idea, only that it seemed as though Carter was towering over her, glowering down at her, as he looked first at her tear-blotched face and then at the glass and bottle.
‘What the devil…?’
Sensitive to his anger, Elspeth immediately flared up. What right had he to dictate to her what she could or could not do? She told him so in a husky, confused sentence which somehow or other became very jumbled and which she hastily concluded, saying crossly, ‘And anyway, why shouldn’t I have a glass of wine if I want one?’ Not for anything was she going to tell him why she had drunk it.
‘A glass,’ Carter retorted scathingly. ‘You’ve damn near drunk the whole bottle. Have you no idea how potent that stuff is? My God. What would your precious Peter say if he could see you now.’
To her own horror Elspeth felt huge tears start to roll down her face. ‘He isn’t mine any longer,’ she choked back at him. ‘It’s over.’
There was a moment’s silence, and then Carter demanded grimly, ‘What?’
‘You heard me,’ Elspeth told him recklessly. ‘It’s over. Peter and I are no longer. It seems that his mother’s wishes are more important to him than mine; that he’d rather spend the weekend with her, entertaining her friends, than here with me. And he knew how much I wanted him here. How important it was to me.’ She sniffed and then winced as lightning forked across the fields, her whole body stiffening as she stared outside, unable to drag her terrified gaze away.
‘Elspeth.’ Carter’s voice suddenly changed, lost its impatient, angry tone and instead, incredibly, became gentle, tender almost. ‘It’s all right, the storm won’t hurt you. You’re safe in here. Look…’
Elspeth turned her head and tried to focus on him, struggling to bring her thoughts to some kind of order, trying to clear the drink-induced miasma from her brain.
‘I know you’re frightened of storms,’ Carter was saying quietly. ‘Your mother told me.’ He saw her expression, and his own mouth suddenly became very grim. ‘For God’s sake, what kind of man do you think I am? Don’t you think I have any compassion, any understanding? It’s been a bad day all round for you, hasn’t it? First Peter, and now this.’ He reached out and touched her face gently with his fingertips and she had an insane desire to lean into him and on to him, to simply let him take charge, to…
‘Look, why don’t you go upstairs and get into bed. I’ll bring you up a cup of tea. I can understand why you did this,’ he added wryly, picking up the wine bottle. ‘But it really isn’t the answer.’
Did he actually think she had deliberately got drunk?
‘It was a mistake,’ she told him huskily. ‘The glass. I didn’t realise…’
Her thoughts had become extremely muddled—chaotically so, and she was finding it impossible to concentrate on anything other than how wonderful Carter looked, and how much she would like him to take her in his arms right now and kiss her the way he had done before. He was looking right at her and with such a strange expression on his face that for one moment she thought she had actually given voice to that desire, but then she heard him saying curtly, ‘I think we’d better get you upstairs, and then—’
Just as she was protesting that she could manage, the thunder rolled noisily overhead, followed by the unmistakable sound of glass breaking.
‘Damn—that must be one of the greenhouses. I’d better go out and check the damage. You stay right where you are,’ he told Elspeth as she tried to get up. ‘I’ll be as quick as I can.’
He heard her gasp as lightning forked brilliantly outside and turned to look at her. ‘Elspeth.’
She shook her head, fighting to clear her fogged brain. ‘I’m all right,’ she lied huskily. ‘You go and check on the greenhouse.’ She’d never forgive herself if more damage than necessary was caused through her inability to cope with her stupid fear. She could see that Carter was reluctant to leave her, but they both knew that the greenhouse was more important than her dread of the storm.
‘Well, stay right where you are,’ Carter told her a second time, as he opened the back door. ‘I’ll be as quick as I can.’
But once he was gone, she couldn’t stay in the kitchen any longer—and besides, what did she need his help for? All she needed was to be somewhere dark and safe. Somewhere where the storm couldn’t reach her and where she could give in to the need to close her eyes.
It took her quite some time to weave her way across the kitchen and to open the door, but at last she managed it, climbing the stairs with slow precision and then making her way very carefully along the landing to her bedroom.
She found the bed without having to switch on the light, and then paused, hesitating before dropping down on to it, frowning in concentration as she fought with the zipper on her jeans, finally managing to struggle out of them and to remove her top. Her underwear quickly followed and was left to lie carelessly on the floor, something she would never normally have dreamed of doing, but her head was spinning so much and she felt so very, very tired.
In fact, in the act of searching for her nightdress she stopped and yawned hugely, promptly forgetting what it was she had been about to do as she half climbed and half stumbled into the middle of the bed, only just managing to push back the duvet, and then quickly burrowing beneath it, pulling it right up over her ears and using it to blot out the sounds of the storm outside.
* * *
‘Elspeth. Elspeth, wake up.’
Someone was shaking her, trying to wake her up, when she didn’t want to be woken up. She said as much, protesting sleepily, and then abruptly making the delicious discovery that the hands firmly trying to shake her awake were attached to arms, and that those arms felt absolutely wonderful beneath her exploring fingertips…smooth, hard, and so very strong, she could even feel the muscles in them contracting beneath her tentative exploration, an awareness that made her feel extremely powerful and rather triumphant until she realised that they were being moved away from her.
She muttered a protest and clung, wriggling closer.
‘Elspeth.’
This time the voice was right in her ear, making her wince and frown. It was a very nice voice, she decided, refusing to open her eyes, even if it did sound rather cross, and the sensation of it so close to her ear was sending the most delicious spirals of sensation over her skin; so delicious in fact that she felt it only fair to show her appreciation, which she promptly did by burying her face in the lovely warm angle between Carter’s neck and shoulder, experimentally nibbling at his bare skin. It tasted even better than she had dreamed, so very, very good, in fact, that she couldn’t resist nibbling her way up to hi
s ear, where she told him sleepily, ‘Mmm…Carter, this is really nice. I wish you would hold me properly though and kiss me,’ she added reproachfully.
She felt the hiss of his indrawn breath and then the tension invade his body.
‘You are drunk,’ he told her flatly. ‘And what’s more you’re in my bed.’
Now she did open her eyes, propping herself up on one elbow as she withdrew from him in affronted dignity. He was, she saw with some pleasure, undressed, and was obviously about to get into bed.
Her bed. She had been right about that. She recognised the shadowy shape of the room and the position of the window.
She told him as much, virtuously keeping her eyes on his face instead of letting her gaze wander, as it very much wished to do, over the exposed expanse of his chest. It was a pity, she decided regretfully, that the room’s shadows cloaked the rest of him, because she was sure that he had the kind of body that she would find it very pleasurable indeed to look at.
Oddly, it didn’t strike her as the least bit strange that she should be thinking of behaving in such a way, and as for Carter’s allegation that she was drunk… Impossible, she never drank. She dismissed a hazy recollection of her mother’s elderberry wine and a very large tumbler and instead concentrated on her victory.
‘This is my room,’ she reaffirmed.
‘Yes,’ Carter agreed grimly. ‘But at the moment I happen to be sleeping in it. You are sleeping in your parents’.’
Elspeth’s forehead furrowed. ‘Not. I’m not—I’m sleeping here, or at least I was until you woke me up.’
‘Well, now that you’re awake, do you suppose you could get out of my bed and go and sleep in your own?’ Carter rasped, patently unmollified.
Elspeth blinked owlishly at him. He really was getting rather cross, and as far as she could see there wasn’t any need. ‘It’s all right, Carter,’ she told him in a kind voice, patting the empty space beside her. ‘There’s plenty of room in here for both of us.’