Dishonest woman

by Jessica Steele

  `Hide yourself in bed before I lose my mind!'

  CHAPTER FOUR

  KIMBERLEY awoke with a sense of foreboding. The memory of how Slade had let her off last night was with her as she opened her eyes. She realised as she came awake to the day that, knowing the reason he had for marrying her at all, she couldn't hope that a second night would pass that would have him leaving her, their marriage still not consummated. And yet it must be as clear to him as last night it had been clear to her that she just couldn't.

  A movement by her dressing table had her glance shooting to the man who stood leaning against it idly watching her. She sat up, taking the bedclothes with her, her mouth dry that maybe he wasn't going to wait until evening. That maybe he considered himself cheated.

  Slade moved away from the dressing table, his eyes glinting dangerously as he read the alarm in her eyes. `Take that look off your face,' he told her sharply. 'I'm not in the mood for a repeat performance of scene one.'

  Kimberley took a steadying breath. And that was about all she had time for before Slade had come and sat on the edge of her bed. She wanted to get up, she felt stifled with him there. She wished he would go away. But Slade Darville, she saw, was not going anywhere until he had the answer to the question he had to put.

  `What are these?' he demanded to know, opening his hand to reveal the bottle of tablets that Kimberley in her agitation of last night had forgotten to return to her dressing table drawer.

  She had seen aggression in him before, saw he was

  in no mood to play games, and the 'It's none of your . business' she wanted to fling at him stayed down. She felt too vulnerable with him entitled to share the privacy of her bedroom.

  `They're—just tablets the doctor prescribed,' she answered woodenly, and saw his jaw jut that that wasn't any kind of an answer.

  Tor?' he asked tersely.

  Why should she tell him? she thought, beginning to get annoyed. Then she saw from his face that she was likely to have him sitting on her bed all day, or worse, if she didn't.

  `If you must know ' she began, then stopped.

  She didn't want him knowing of her weaknesses, didn't want him to know she was so sensitive sometimes she had difficulty in coping.

  `I'm going to know,' Slade stated bluntly, completely unmoved at the shadows that crossed her face.

  Kimberley was over the moment of remembering David, of wanting to weep. Slade's blunt aggression had stiffened her.

  `I took—my broken engagement—badly,' she said /flatly. 'Dr Ellis thought . .

  `Tranquillisers!' he said, then was snapping abruptly, his voice accusing, 'You've been filling yourself up with this sort of junk since then?'

  `He thought I was heading for a nervous breakdown,' she said defensively, looking past him, not seeing why,she should have to put up with his castigation, but powerless—unless she wanted to try for the isolation of the bathroom with small chance of getting there without him following her—to do anything else.

  A brooding silence hung in the air, Slade considering what she had told him, and Kimberley wishing he would go back to London and stay there.

  But his voice had changed when next he spoke. The underlying aggression was still there, but his voice was quietly thoughtful.

  `How many do you take a day?'

  `I haven't taken any for ages,' she told him. 'I just— just like to keep them handy in case . .

  `You took one last night?' Aggression was back. `Yes.' It was her turn to snap.

  `Before or after I went to bed?'

  Kimberley threw him a look of mutinous dislike. He was aloof to it, waiting, his own look relentless. 'When you left,' she muttered.

  `I upset you that much?'

  Didn't he know he had? Why did he have to put her through this third degree? Good grief, once he'd taken what he had married her for, he'd be away without giving her another thought!

  `Well?' he pressed impatiently.

  `Yes,' she said moodily, her eyes flying to his at his insensitivity, when he answered:

  `Good.'

  `Good?' she exclaimed, wondering what sort of a villain she had married, that he could be so uncaring that she had felt near trauma after the dressing room door had firmly closed.

  He stood up, his look hostile. 'It's about time somebody woke you up.'

  Annoyance with him flickered to anger. The cruel swine! she thought, fire touching her eyes when he looked mockingly down at her. She moved, intensely irritated by him, saw her movement had drawn his gaze to her naked shoulder peeping out from under the sheet, and paled.

  `Get dressed and come downstairs before I remember that as your husband I have certain rights,' he told her roughly.

  She glared at his departing, bossy back. He wasn't going to be her husband for very much longer, she fumed as she banged about in the bathroom, entirely unaware that this was the first time in a long day that she had been stirred to seething anger.

  She was still wearing her metaphorical 'I hate Slade Darville' hat when, fifteen minutes later, dressed in cool cream linen slacks and a pale green shirt, she went downstairs.

  It didn't help matters as she went along the hall kitchenwards, to pass her father's study door, open when it had been closed since his death, to see the man who had started a healthy hate growing in her comfortably ensconced in her father's chair.

  `Come in here,' he invited, for all the world as though the study was his, Bramcote his.

  Kimberley went in. She wanted to tell him to get out of her father's chair, to leave the study, to get out of her house. But she didn't get the chance.

  `So, Mrs Darville,' he said insolently, stoking up fires of anger in her by the careless wave of his hand that indicated she should take the only other chair in the room. 'So why did you marry me?'

  Kimberley refused to sit, just as she refused to answer. Slade could go hang before she told him anything!

  `Tell me,' he said, his eyes hard as he rephrased his question, 'what it is about me that's so special—that is if I'm supposed to believe you and it wasn't just my money that drew your avaricious little gaze?'

  That stung. 'It didn't have to be you,' flew from her. And having said that much she didn't see why she shouldn't do some stinging of her own. 'Any man would have done!'

  She then found that when it came to hitting below the belt, Slade Darville outclassed her. His jaw moved, then he was hitting her with:

  `Too bad the only man you wanted didn't want you, wasn't it?'

  Shock at his brutish remark had tears shimmering, her temper gone. Slade looked away from the pain in her eyes, and Kimberley groped for the chair it would have been wiser to sit in before she had realised the

  strength of her opponent, who ignored all the rules of civilised combat.

  His eyes were on her again, saw she was seated. But he waited no longer to renew his onslaught; his intent, she saw, was to get to the bottom of everything.

  `What did you mean last night when you said "The house is mine by right"?' he pursued. 'Is it this house you were talking about?'

  The fight sustained for so long by the anger he aroused in her had gone, flattened by his brutal reminder that David didn't want her.

  `Yes,' she said quietly. And shaking her head, glove this house. My father knew how much I loved Bramcote. And—and yet...'

  Part of her was no longer with Slade. She was remembering again that deep shock she had felt when Charles Forester had told her the terms of her father's will, the awareness that had been with her of why he had done it.

  `And yet?' prompted Slade, making her conscious that he wasn't going anywhere in a hurry,' that he had all day to drag everything out of her if need be.

  `Under the terms of my father's will,' she said, pulling herself together and eyeing Slade Darville's persistent countenance with intense dislike, 'I could only inherit Bramcote,' her voice faded as she brought out the words Charles Forester had had to repeat to her before they had properly sunk in, 'if my status was 'that of a marr
ied woman on a date six months from the date of my father's death.'

  She had gone from Slade, remembering again the shock that had ripped through her that day. Slade brought her sharply back, taking what she had revealed in his stride.

  `Fortunate for you I asked you to marry me, wasn't it?' he said sourly.

  Kimberley looked at him, seeing no point now in holding anything back. 'I did consider the possibility

  of doing the proposing myself if you didn't look like doing so,' she told him honestly—and couldn't miss, from the surprise in his face, that this was something he just hadn't been expecting.

  `My God!' he breathed. Then, his surprise quickly over, 'May I ask, if you had done the proposing, what you were going to offer as bait? I assume,' his eyes flicked insolently over her, 'the body was not to be part of the bargain.'

  She bit her lip. She guessed she had asked for that one. 'I hadn't got round to thinking very deeply about your part in all of it,' she said, that honesty that was bred in her reluctant to leave.

  `That much is obvious,' he said shortly—which had her remembering the way he had seemed determined to possess her last night, the way she had fought and struggled with him so that he should not.

  But he was waiting to know what she had supposed he was going to get out of it if it had come to it that she had been the one to do the asking. He didn't put the question again of what was she going to offer as bait. But she was learning about him, learning that once he had set his mind on something, he was very determined. And she knew she wasn't leaving this room until he had learned all there was to learn.

  `It occurred to me,' she said, that honesty in her preventing her from lying, 'that with you an out-of-work actor, as I thought,' she still hadn't fully accepted that she had married herself to a wealthy man, 'that perhaps it might save your pocket to live here free for a few weeks.' She saw his eyebrows lift at that, but having got started, she went on, stumbling, 'Father didn't didn't—he only left enough money for me to—well, he didn't leave much in actual cash. But I would have offered you half . .

  She heard his sharp intake of breath. 'So you weren't after my money!'

  `No. I told you I wasn't,' she said, angry that he

  could believe that of her.

  `No need to get hot and bothered,' said Slade easily. `Your honesty since this discussion started has me believing you.' He paused, gave time for that to sink in, to cool her rising anger, then asked, 'Why, with your father knowing how you care about . ..' he glanced around him, having the opposite effect of damping down her anger by calling her beloved Bramcote, 'this heap of masonry, did he put the married woman stipulation on your inheriting?'

  `Isn't it obvious?' she said snappily.

  `So tell me.'

  Kimberley glared at him, tempted to walk out right then. But she knew, even as the temptation to do so came, that she might as well get it all over with now. He would only follow her around the house, wherever she went, badgering her with his question. Too late she was beginning to know him. Though it wasn't too late. Didn't she have Bramcote?

  Slade returned her glaring look with a steady, unconcerned by her anger look of his own. Damn him, she thought, hating that he was silently waiting. Waiting, knowing she couldn't go anywhere where he couldn't follow.

  She sighed, knowing herself helpless. 'My father knew I would never marry. I told him I wouldn't.' Because of David Bennet?'

  Anguish was with her to hear David's name spoken. Had she mentioned David's surname, or had he heard it from Doreen? Edward? Her meditations were cut short. Slade wasn't waiting for an answer to his question, he had another one ready.

  `Why was it so important to your father that you marry?' She didn't like that question any more than she had liked any of his others. But he was pressing on. 'As I understand it, young women these days no longer regard being married as the be-all and end-all.'

  He was shrewd, she saw. He had not taken anything

  she had told him at face value. He was digging and digging, regardless of any pain he might cause her.

  `What's so different about you, Kimberley,' he refused to let up, 'that your father, as devoted to you as you were devoted to him from all I've heard, should think it so imperative that you marry?'

  `Damn you!' came firing from her. She'd had enough. Was nothing sacred? 'It's none of your business...'

  `By marrying me, you've made everything my business,' he fired back ruthlessly.

  Electricity charged between them as Kimberley refused to answer and Slade insisted that she should. They weren't going to be married for very much longer, she could see that, so why should she answer? From where she was sitting he looked to be in the same mind as her—that the sooner they were divorced the better.

  Yet still he waited for her reply. Her stubbornness wilted. She wanted to be by herself, and there was only one way that was to be achieved.

  `If you must know,' she said, the words dragged from her against her will. 'If you must know, my father was over-protective about me.' Now would he be satisfied?

  He wasn't. 'What cause had he for being over-protective?' He refused to let up, making her think exasperatedly that a barrister would have been a better calling for him than a stockbroker.

  She sighed as the words tugged from her, 'My mother was—highly strung.' Fed up to the back teeth with his questions, despairing of having just her own solitary company ever again, she let him have it all in one go, as she added, 'My father thought I might have inherited some of her highly-strung tendencies.' And going on, kicking all the way, 'When I was ten he insisted, against my mother's wishes, that I was sent away to boarding school. He thought it might toughen me up...'

  She saw that some of the asperity had gone from Slade, but there was still a question in his eyes. It had her continuing, not waiting for the question to be asked, her voice beginning to falter:

  `I—I was back home after a week. During that week I was away m-my mother accidentally drowned.' Silently Slade waited. 'My father blamed himself,' Kimberley added.

  A kind of hush fell in the room in the moments it took before Slade's quietly spoken enquiry came.

  `He thought that, missing you, she had committed suicide?'

  She nodded. 'I'm positive it was accidental,' she said, feeling strangely, much calmer now. 'The area where it happened always had been dangerous. It's fenced off now.'

  `So,' he said slowly, 'unsure if your mother's death was suicide, your father kept more than a normal paternal eye on you.'

  `Yes,' she admitted, and knew he was waiting for more. 'I can only guess that—that after I showed signs of a nervous breakdown, Dad, knowing his time with us was limited, knowing also how much I love this house—that I would do anything to keep it— thought, he must have done, that a—a husband would take over his role of protecting me after he'd gone.'

  Sadness was with her as she came to the end. She had loved her father so much, but oh, how misguided he had been! She might be like her mother in looks, but she had inherited something from her father too. She would have coped without David, as he had learned to cope without his adored Rosemary. She would have managed.

  Her sadness was interrupted by Slade. Aggression was back there again, taking no account that he had stripped her bare, as he gritted:

  `What a pity for you, dear Kimberley, that my feelings for you come nowhere near to being fatherly.'

  `Your feelings for me?' She was rapidly brought out of her melancholy. 'Oh . . .' Memory returned of his hands on her body, her breasts, and she swallowed. Surely he wasn't saying he still fancied her? 'Your feelings are cancelled out now, aren't they?' she asked quickly, then, starting to feel on firmer ground, 'I mean, now you know you've made a mistake. You had no intention of staying married to me for very long anyway, had you . . .' She missed the narrowing of his eyes, and felt things were at last beginning to swing her way as she trotted out, 'Doreen said if you ever married you'd want a divorce as soon as you'd realised _ what you'd done.' She even managed a
smile. 'Don't you think,' she said pleasantly, 'that we might as well divorce now, since we don't have to wait the few weeks it might have taken you to realise you'd made a mistake?'

  Slade smiled too—and she just didn't know him well enough not to trust it. Did I say,' he asked softly, `that I considered I'd made a mistake?'

  `But you have! Of course you have,' came bolting from her. 'You married me,' she went on hurriedly, `because you thought you couldn't— er—get into bed with me any other way.' And, not pausing for breath, `I think we both know now that you—er—are never going to share my bed.' Kimberley felt better for having got that secret knowledge into the open, and tried her smile again. But it was less certain than it had been before when she saw that Slade didn't appear to be too thrilled with what she was saying. But she wasn't ready to stop yet. `So—so we can divorce,' she said— and, offering him another uncertain smile, 'We can part friends, can't we, Slade? You can divorce me for non-consummation if you wish, and . .

  'And you'll be quite happy in this dilapidated house,' he said quietly, taking the, smile off her face. Then suddenly he was snarling, 'You selfish bitch! You sel-

  fish little bitch!' And while she was staring at him open-mouthed he was thundering, 'Wrapped up in your own small cottonwool world—other people's feelings don't matter a damn to you, do they? Nothing matters to you just so long as you get what you want.'

  `That's not true!' she protested. Then, aghast, appalled as for one dreadful moment the insane idea came that Slade might—love her—she asked, `Feelings?' and was dismissing the notion as ridiculous, even as she was adding, 'What do you mean?' and received his confirmation that love for her didn't enter into it.

  `It just hasn't occurred to you, has it, that I might have friends, business acquaintances, whom I've told I won't be seeing for a while because I shall be on my honeymoon? You haven't so much as even deigned to consider what I should feel when those same people learn that my marriage is at an end because I couldn't get my wife to consummate the marriage!'