Читать книгу A Heartless Marriage - HELEN BROOKS, Helen Brooks - Страница 7

‘I’LL see you to your door.’ Leigh’s heart was still

pounding with disgust at her own weakness as they drew up outside the block of flats where she lived, and as his cool expressionless voice cut into her whirling thoughts she stiffened instinctively, her eyes widening in protest.

‘No!’ She lowered her voice a few decibels and tried again. ‘No, Raoul, please don’t.’

‘As you wish.’ He was sitting very still, an intense watchfulness colouring his eyes ice-blue. ‘Goodnight, Leigh.’

‘What? Oh, goodnight.’ This was it, then? After five years? A macabre anticlimax was making her knees weak.

As she climbed out of the car it was gone in an instant, roaring down the street to the blaring of horns and screaming brakes from the other traffic, the sound of its engine soon lost in the general mêlée.

As the lift took her upwards she really felt as though she was going to collapse. Her legs felt like jelly and there was a strange blackness that was most peculiar coming and going in front of her eyes. She suddenly realised she was leaning against the wall of the lift, which was unsavoury at the best of times, and on a Saturday evening, after the revelry and beer-swilling carousal of a Friday night, definitely suspect.

It brought her back to earth abruptly and she even found herself smiling at the irony of leaving Raoul’s fabulously expensive car to step into such a paradoxical little box. She shrugged wearily. Such was life. If only Raoul were as easy to shrug away.

The little flat was cool and welcoming as she opened her front door. One of the advantages of being on the sixth floor was that she could leave the large French doors that took up almost one wall of the tiny lounge open in the summer, letting the cool night air and rich scents from the tiny balcony crammed full with potted plants and sweet-smelling tubs of bright flowers stream into the room. She used this room as a small studio; the light was excellent all year round, and the minute tiled bathroom leading off the small box bedroom and even tinier kitchen kept housework to a minimum.

She owned one comfortable old easy-chair parked at one side of the windows, one bed and a small wardrobe, and that was all the furniture she possessed, having ploughed all her money into the hundreds of pounds’ worth of canvases, paints and brushes that roamed across every inch of available space, cluttering the walls in untidy harmony and filling the flat with the smell of turpentine and paint. And she loved it. She stood for a moment feasting her eyes on her little domain, willing the hard-won peace and quiet contentment back into her heart. But it was no good. She grimaced to herself helplessly. Raoul had destroyed it, at least for tonight. She wouldn’t let it be any longer than that!

She was standing under the shower, letting the cool water annihilate the last flush of humiliation still staining her skin pink, when the telephone called stridently from its hook on the kitchen wall. ‘You can just ring,’ she told it loudly, reaching for the bottle of shampoo and pouring a large amount of the thick creamy mixture into her hair, working up a lather determinedly.

She couldn’t speak to anyone tonight, she just couldn’t. Her head was swimming with a thousand and one images, her mind was aching and she still didn’t know why Raoul had exploded back into her life! The phone rang again as she was towelling herself dry and once more as she lay in bed sipping a hot mug of cocoa and flicking through a magazine article on life drawing by one of her old lecturers at college. It had become a matter of principle not to answer it now, a kind of rebellion against having the frame of her carefully built screen of fragile self-sufficiency broken by Raoul’s easy intrusion.

Sleep was too long in coming and she didn’t have the patience to wait for it, preferring paint and canvas after an hour of tossing and turning and forcing her mind away from paths that it dared not follow. Delectable, forbidden paths where Raoul’s magnificent body was exposed in all its flagrant manhood and her shape was moulded into his in a manner as old as time. The phone was now off the hook; that, at least, she could control! She had another cool shower before she started work at two o’clock. The night was excessively warm, she told herself aggressively—that was absolutely all it was!

At six she fell into bed just as she was, paintsmeared and somewhat grubby, and at eight o’clock she was woken by a furious pounding at her front door that she was sure could be heard on the tenth floor.

She stumbled bleary-eyed to the door, still in her tattered old painting smock, her hair tangled and hanging limply on her shoulders and her eyes cloudy with lack of sleep.

‘And just where the hell have you been?’

‘What?’ Raoul’s face was a picture of injured outrage and for a moment she wondered if she was in the middle of some inexplicable nightmare. ‘What are you doing here?’

‘Answer me, damn you!’ He seemed very angry, she reflected weakly as she tried to spark her mind into ignition. ‘I’ve been ringing this number most of the night. First there was no answer and then it was engaged. What are you playing at? Who have you got here?’ His voice was bitingly sharp.

‘Who have I…?’ He brushed past her into the flat, stalking into each tiny room before coming to a halt in front of her stained easel, the paint on the canvas still tacky.

‘You’ve been working all night, haven’t you? You took the phone off the hook because you were working. You stupid girl!’ He glared at her angrily. ‘What about an emergency? What if someone was trying to get you urgently?’

‘Stop shouting at me!’ She had found her tongue along with the burning resentment that was filling her small body from head to foot. ‘And what did that gibe mean, incidentally? “Who have I got here?” You cheeky hound! We aren’t all like you, Raoul. Some of us consider that there are more important things than procreational pursuits!’

‘What?’ In a more conventional situation the look of sheer amazement on Raoul’s face would have been food for her soul, but just at the moment she couldn’t appreciate that for once she had totally and completely surprised him.

‘You burst into my home, you accuse me of goodness knows what and then you criticise my lifestyle! How dare you? How dare you? You haven’t bothered with me for five years and now you think you can tell me what to do. Get out! Get out!’

‘“Procreational pursuits”?’ He didn’t even seem to have heard the rest of her tirade. ‘“Procreational pursuits”!’ The great peal of unbridled raucous laughter took her completely by surprise. Raoul laughed the way he did everything else, with unrestrained frankness and wholehearted participation, and in spite of the fact that it was eight o’clock on a Sunday morning and the neighbours would be thinking-well, she didn’t dare to imagine what they would be thinking-she found herself infected by his appreciation of the moment. Unfortunately they had always had the same slightly off-beat sense of humour. It had seemed good when they were together but as Mrs Billett next door banged ferociously on the wall and Mr Silver overhead nearly brought the ceiling down with his walking-stick, she tried to restrain the paroxysms of laughter that recurred every time she thought she had control. It was nerves, it had to be.

‘Oh, Leigh.’ Raoul had collapsed on the one and only chair and was looking at her through streaming eyes. ‘Only you could come out with a phrase like that. “Procreational pursuits”!’ His head went back in another burst of laughter. ‘You’re priceless, kitten, you really are.’

Somehow the nickname sobered them both at the same moment and from helpless laughter they changed to expectant stillness within seconds. ‘Leigh?’ Raoul’s voice was a low endearment and she shuddered against it, her hands going out in unconscious protest as she took a step backwards. ‘Let me hold you, show you nothing has really changed.’

‘No, no, Raoul.’ He crossed the room in one movement to stand looking down at her, small and defenceless, in front of his overpoweringly tall bulk, and then with a smothered groan he lifted her right off her feet into his arms.

‘You’ve got paint on your nose and you stink of turpentine,’ he said softly as he traced the outline of her jaw with tiny feather-light kisses, his lips moving to her mouth as she opened it to protest. ‘And you’re so damn beautiful.’ Why that word should be the catalyst to the emotion that was sending hot waves of desire into every nerve-ending she didn’t know. Maybe it was because no one else had ever called her beautiful, maybe it was because the images she had been fighting all night had reared their sensual heads as soon as she had seen his face again. Whatever, she was now fighting herself as much as him and she was suddenly scared to death.

‘Put me down, Raoul! I don’t want this, I don’t want you—’ As he smothered her voice with a piercingly sweet kiss the feel of his hard, warm lips brought a host of memories she was powerless to resist. Raoul, the frighteningly perceptive lover who had been as anxious for her satisfaction as his own, infinitely patient, incredibly tender but capable of such heights of erotic passion that she had frequently felt she would die from the glorious ecstasy he induced.

He had been her first love, her only love, and had constantly delighted in fusing their bodies into rapturous oblivion until she had been quivering and sated in his arms. This was the Raoul she had purposely blocked out of her consciousness for years in her desire to survive, drawing on the mental picture of a cold hard womaniser who had betrayed her in the most callous way possible and with seemingly no shred of remorse.

‘I want you, my darling.’ How they had reached the bed she didn’t know-she hadn’t been aware that he had carried her there as she had continued to struggle against the seductive weakness that was flooding her limbs at his touch-but as he laid her down on the rumpled covers she brought every ounce of will-power she possessed into play. It couldn’t happen again, she couldn’t let him take her over again.

‘Leave me alone, Raoul.’ Her eyes were huge as she stared up at him in the dim light from the curtained window. ‘I can’t—’

‘But you can, kitten! We’re married, Leigh; you’re my wife, remember?’ His voice was teasingly mocking as he stroked a silky lock of brown hair away from her face with a gentle hand, lazily leaning forward to take her lips with his own again.

He was so sure of himself, she thought with a little dart of pain that strengthened her resolve. So sure that he could overcome her resistance as though the last five years had meant nothing! But then, they probably hadn’t to him! Had he even noticed she’d gone? She froze into stillness as he kissed her again, forcing her senses into submission and willing the warm pulsing beat of desire that was making her limbs shake to quieten. He didn’t notice her lack of response at first, and as he continued to trace a path of fire over her face and throat she knew it was only a matter of time before the heat that was bursting into life deep inside became evident again. She clenched her hands tightly by her side. She had to make him stop and this was the only way. She had to find the strength from somewhere.

Her complete lack of movement finally got through to him and he raised himself slowly, leaning on one elbow at her side to look into her wide brown eyes as he raked back the shock of curly black hair from his brow. ‘Don’t tell me I’m losing my touch?’ The dry, sardonic tone whipped a flush of colour into her cheeks and fanned the earlier flame of pain into white-hot agony.

With a bitterness that was directed at herself as well as him she stiffened into stone in an effort to hide the hurt. He really didn’t care! ‘Losing your touch?’ Her voice dripped with contempt. ‘Is that all anything means to you? An opportunity to prove you’re the greatest? That no woman is immune?’ Mercifully anger was replacing the pain now.

If she hadn’t been so angry she would have taken warning at the slow darkening of his face but right at that moment she was incapable of taking notice of anything. ‘You disgust me, Raoul, with your arrogant and all-important male ego. We’re strangers now and you know it! We’re just two people held together by a meaningless piece of paper.’

‘Like hell we are!’ He swung his legs violently over the edge of the bed as he turned from her. ‘Was that why you insisted on a church wedding because all our marriage boiled down to was an expendable bit of paper? I do not believe this, Leigh; I know you better than that. You are my wife, my wife in the eyes of God and man, and I know it and so do you.’ His accent was as brittle as glass.

‘No—’

‘Oh, yes, my little English rose.’ He stood up as she drew herself into a sitting position, locking her hands round her knees after pulling the short smock down to her feet. ‘You are mine and what is mine I keep. You should know this.’ His voice was shaking with rage and cold determination.

‘Raoul, listen to me—’

‘Why should I?’ He spun round now with a dark raging fury in his eyes that made her shrink away in fear. ‘You do not listen to me, do you? You didn’t listen five years ago and still you will not. What is it with you?’

‘What is it with me?’ The sheer arrogance acted like a shot of adrenalin and her small face was convulsed with hot resentment and burning fury. ‘How can you ask me that? You aren’t real! You just aren’t real.’

‘This is nonsense,’ he said coldly, his face hard and his eyes an icy blue. ‘If you cannot talk sense—’

‘Can’t talk sense!’ He had turned into the iceman again but for the life of her she couldn’t match his coolness. He stood gazing at her, powerfully, dangerously handsome with an insolent tilt to the ebony head and his eyes such a startling vivid blue that her breath suddenly caught in her throat as she fought for words. He was so handsome. So amazingly, painfully handsome. What had he ever seen in her anyway? ‘I may not be saying what you want to hear but it makes perfect sense, to me at any rate.’ Her voice was trembling and low and she heard it with a little throb of self-disgust. She wouldn’t let him break her, reduce her to tears again.

He swore softly as he took in the huge brown eyes in her chalk-white face, filled with a churning darkness that made him run his hand through his hair wearily, the anger draining from his face as he shook his head gently. ‘You are your own worst enemy, kitten,’ he said softly. ‘We were so good together once and you cannot deny we were happy. You can’t fight what’s between us, Leigh; your body betrays you every time I touch you. You want me to make love to you.’

For a stunned moment she couldn’t believe what she was hearing, couldn’t believe he could have the audacity to actually voice such incredible words in view of what he had done. ‘You betrayed me, Raoul.’ Her voice was flat now and totally devoid of expression. ‘In the worst possible way. In our own bed. You can’t deny that.’

‘I cannot?’ His eyes narrowed slowly and his voice was very tight, his body stiff with emotion. ‘But of course I cannot. It is all cut and dried, is it not? Like that evening five years ago when I wasn’t allowed to speak?’

‘Oh, and I suppose if you’d come back to our home and found me in bed with another man you would have sat down with us in a reasonable manner and asked politely for an explanation?’ She glared at him. ‘There was only one possible interpretation. Admit it!’

‘You weary me.’ His face had hardened further at the note of undisguised disgust in her voice.

‘I weary you?’ She was aware in the far recesses of her mind that she kept repeating his remarks like a dozy parrot, but the haughty insolence was leaving her gasping for words. ‘Well, maybe I do at that. But I’m not stupid and I won’t pretend to be. Marion had been after you for weeks and you knew it. I suppose you only held out for as long as you did because she was your best friend’s wife and they were staying with us. You betrayed him and me and for what? A little—’ She stopped abruptly and took a long deep breath, settling back into the bed and pulling the covers more closely around her. She felt suddenly cold, cold and very tired. ‘Anyway, it’s over, finished; none of it matters any more. Maybe we can be friends one day.’ She missed the lightning flash of pain in his face.

‘I do not want friendship from you,’ he said savagely. ‘I want more, much more than that or nothing at all.’

‘Then it will be nothing,’ she said slowly as she

lifted her eyes to stare straight into the arctic blue of his.

‘You think so?’ His voice was soft now and with a chilling coldness that sent a tiny shiver sparking down her spine. She knew Raoul. He was always at his most dangerous when perfectly in control like now. ‘Tell me, my Leigh, what did you imagine would happen in the future? Did you seriously expect me to remain in the background like an emasculated stallion forever?’ She shivered at the crudity.

‘I didn’t expect anything,’ she said tightly, forcing her eyes not to fall before the piercing clarity of his. ‘I didn’t expect anything and I don’t want anything. Not from you. I thought you knew that after all this time.’

‘Then this is where you are wrong,’ he said calmly as he walked easily towards the door, his big shoulders proudly straight and his head held high. ‘Quite wrong.’

‘Can’t you just leave me alone, Raoul—?’

He spun round instantly with that smooth animal reflex she remembered from the past. She could tell he was angry, blazingly angry, but the big body was held in quiet restraint and his voice was perfectly contained when he next spoke.

‘No, I will not leave you alone any more.’ It was a statement rather than a threat but it had the same effect on her as the latter. She couldn’t understand any of this. What exactly did he want of her after all these years? ‘We have things to decide and arrangements to make but I refuse to discuss it now. Not with you in this mood.’

‘This “mood” is me,’ she said sharply, ‘and nothing you could say would convince me—’

He cut off her words with a vicious stab of his hand as he waved her to silence from the doorway. ‘I have given you the time you asked for that day when you left, the chance to follow your dream of becoming an artist, the opportunity to become your own person, but that doesn’t mean that I will allow anyone else to take my place. Do you understand me?’ He glared at her across the small room, his hands arrogantly splayed on his hips and his eyes flashing cold fire. ‘If I had kept you with me you would never have been sure of what you could have achieved, never sure if your love for me was a mirage that had chained you to my side.’

She stared at him silently as she tried to take in what he was saying. This was all nonsense. She hadn’t said—

‘I have never been more than a step behind you through the years. I have known exactly what you were doing, what you were involved with, who you were seeing and when. And this Jeff Capstone, I will not tolerate that you see him. Is that clear?’

She still couldn’t speak, couldn’t formulate what she was hearing’I shall return to see you tomorrow and I will tell you then how I expect you to behave. Goodbye, Leigh.’

‘Raoul!’ As she found her tongue the front door slammed with a violence that rocked the tiny flat and as she went to leap out of bed to follow him, her cheeks scarlet with anger, she caught her bare foot in the bedclothes and fell in a sprawling heap on to the floor. By the time she reached the front door the lift’s ancient whirring mechanism informed her she was too late. He had gone.

As she slowly stepped back in the flat, shutting the door, her rage grew in tune with her sense of injustice. It was as though they had been talking about a different marriage and two different people! She ground her teeth furiously. She had left him because she had found him in bed with another woman! End of story. What was all this rubbish about time and being her own person? And he had had her followed! She paced the small flat angrily. He had actually had the audacity to have her followed!

She made herself a cup of instant coffee in order to give her shaking hands something to do, wandering out on to the small balcony as she sipped the hot liquid and looking out over the rooftops into the clear blue sky.

If he contacted her again, when he contacted her again, she was going to insist on that divorce. She closed her eyes tightly. She had to sever all links, all ties; she should have done it years ago. Why hadn’t she? She opened her eyes to gaze unseeing into the warm summer air. Because she had been hanging on to a dream against all reason. She had pushed the divorce out of her mind, not because she didn’t want to think of Raoul but because she dared not!

She brushed back the heavy fall of hair from her face and took a big gulp of coffee, letting the burning liquid trace an avenue of fire into her chest. In those heady days of marriage she had dreamt of their life together as being for always, of their babies, their grandchildren. She smiled bitterly to herself. But it had just been part of the impossible dream and she’d had to let go of it before it destroyed her. It hadn’t been real. Their life together hadn’t been real.

She leant against the wrought iron, which was already slightly warm from the heat of the summer’s day, as dark misery gripped her mind. Raoul’s wealth had cocooned them in an endless honeymoon. First a few months at his beautiful house in the Caribbean, eight weeks at his villa in Greece and then a long, slow cruise on his private yacht to the house he called home in the South of France.

It had been miraculous and magical-but it hadn’t been real. Real life was working and caring and loving and taking the rough with the smooth. It had been all smoothness. And it was finished.

As she turned to go back into the room she noticed a tiny tentacled weed in a tub of wallflowers in the corner of the balcony and suddenly its intrusion seemed symbolic of Raoul’s reappearance in her life. As she pulled it, viciously, from the black earth she nodded to herself desperately as the flood of tears she could no longer restrain burnt hot on her face. It was finished. It had to be.