Читать книгу Lingering Shadows - Пенни Джордан, Penny Jordan - Страница 8

IT HAD been Davina’s father who had been responsible for Davina’s meeting Gregory.

Gregory had come to work for Carey’s as their technical salesman and her father had invited him to one of the dinners he occasionally gave for certain members of his staff.

Davina had been busy in the kitchen when everyone arrived. These dinners were always something of an ordeal for her. Her father was a perfectionist and Davina dreaded his disapproval if everything was not as he wished it to be.

She had spent virtually all week preparing for this dinner, shopping, cleaning, polishing the silver, washing, starching and then ironing the table linen. And picking flowers from the garden and then arranging them. Her father would never countenance wasting money on buying flowers.

He personally selected the menus he wished Davina to serve, and they were always complicated. Her father was a fussy eater, preferring small, delicately cooked dishes, but on these occasions he liked to impress with lavish cordon bleu meals.

Sticky and uncomfortable from the heat of the kitchen, praying frantically that she had correctly judged the timing and that the hot soufflé her father had insisted on for the first course would not deflate before everyone was seated, Davina heard the kitchen door open. Expecting to see her father walk in to tell her that she could serve the soufflé, she was astonished to see instead a very good-looking young man.

He smiled at her, a warm flashing smile that showed the whiteness of his teeth. His skin was tanned; his brown hair shone. He was tall and lean, and there was a warmth in his brown eyes as he smiled at her that made her face burn even more hotly than the heat from the kitchen.

‘Hello, I’m Gregory James,’ he said to her, introducing himself and holding out his hand.

Automatically Davina extended hers and only just stopped herself from gasping out loud at the frisson of sensation that struck her as he slowly curled his fingers around hers and shook her hand.

No one had ever affected her like this before. In her naïveté her skin flushed darker, her whole body trembling as she succumbed to his sexual magnetism.

‘I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to disturb you,’ Gregory told her smoothly as he released her hand.

For a moment Davina felt confused. There was something about the tone in which he delivered the apology that jarred on her, some falseness, some instinctive awareness of a mockery of her, as though he intended the words to have a double meaning, as though he was laughing at her for her reaction to him, but these feelings were so vague and unformed that they had vanished before she could really grasp them, leaving her to stammer a few incoherent words, while Gregory continued, ‘Your father was on his way to tell you that everyone is ready to eat, and I asked if I might deliver the message for him. And to see if there was anything I could do to help.’

To help? Davina gave him an unguarded startled look. Her father believed that it was a woman’s place to be subservient in every way to the males in the household, and the thought of any man offering her any kind of domestic help was a concept with which Davina was completely unfamiliar.

‘Thank you, but there’s really no need,’ she began breathlessly, but he stopped her, looking at her until she could no longer meet the intensity of his gaze as he said slowly,

‘Oh, yes, there is. There is every need. I’ve been wanting to meet you, Davina.’

He … this wonderful, good-looking man, had been wanting to meet her? She shook her head dizzily, wondering if she had fallen asleep and was having a dream, but no, it was real. He was real. She was so flustered that she could barely even breathe, never mind think of moving, and Gregory, watching her, allowed himself a small inner smile of satisfaction. Good. She was obviously as naïve and dumb as he had heard. He had met her. Now the rest should be easy.

Brought up by a widowed mother who had died while he was in his first year at university, Gregory had always bitterly resented the good fortune of others, a good fortune which had been denied to him. His mother was poor. He was clever and good-looking, but he learned early in life that that did not compensate for lack of wealth. Wealth was power, and power was what Gregory wanted. He had learned young to smile and say nothing when others taunted him or drew attention to his second-hand school uniform and the poverty of his possessions. His time would come. He would make sure that it came.

It was while he was at university that he realised how hard it was going to be for him to achieve his ambition. The best jobs, and with them the money and the power he craved, would not be offered to someone like him. They would go to others, youths with far fewer qualifications than he possessed, far less worthwhile degrees, but they had something more important than intelligence: they had family; they had position and power.

It had been a chance conversation he had overheard between two fellow graduates which had told him the path he must take through life. Both of them were unaware of his presence, and were discussing a third, absent friend.

‘You know, his sister’s getting married in June. He was telling me about it last week. She’s in the club. His family are furious. Apparently she’s been going around with some working-class type, who obviously knew which side his bread was buttered on. Now she’s pregnant, the family have no option but to let them marry, and they’ll have to support them, find him some sort of decent job. They’re furious about the whole thing, but, of course, they’re putting a brave face on it.’

‘Nice work if you can get it,’ the other man commented wryly. ‘Marrying a rich girl.’

Marrying a rich girl. Gregory mulled the thought over in his mind, letting it lie fallow for a short time before finally allowing it to take root.

The problem was that he did not know any rich girls. He knew girls … plenty of them. He was a good-looking young man who had grown up in an environment where teenagers had begun experimenting with sex well under the legal age limit, and he had learned early the basic mechanics of sex. To those over the years he had added a variety of refinements which so far had ensured him as much success as he needed or wanted with the opposite sex.

When he wished he could be ingratiatingly charming and well mannered, surface attributes that went no more than skin-deep, as those of his sexual partners who had not immediately taken the hint that he was tired of them had very quickly found out.

Gregory had no real warmth about him, no real kindness; as far as he was concerned, they were weaknesses he could not afford.

A rich wife. He bided his time. The doors to the homes of his fellow graduates, or at least those who could have introduced him to the lifestyle he craved, remained firmly closed to him. He got a job and then another, and finally a third with Carey’s.

He had chosen Carey’s out of three possible employers because he had learned from eavesdropping on a casual conversation while waiting to be interviewed that the man who owned Carey’s had only one child, an unmarried daughter.

Gregory had become very adept over the years at listening to other people’s conversations. He had discovered it was an extremely profitable way of learning things.

He had been at Carey’s now for six months. That was how long it had taken him to discreetly and cautiously bring himself to old man Carey’s eye, without offending or arousing the suspicions of his co-employees.

He had accepted the accolade of the dinner invitation for one purpose only, and that had been to meet this small, naïve girl with the flushed face and untidy hair. He had made enough discreet enquiries into Carey’s now to know just how rich Davina would one day be.

Physically she was not his type. He liked women with endless legs, generously curved bodies and with that look in their eyes which said they knew what life was all about.

Davina Carey was small and slight, her body girlish rather than sensual. Her eyes held naïveté and self-consciousness. And when they looked at him they also held awe and wonder.

As he accepted Davina’s disjointed dismissal and left the kitchen—after all, he had never intended actually to help her; that had simply been an opportune method of meeting her—he was smiling to himself.

Physically, as a woman, she might not appeal to him, but as a wife, a rich wife, she would be ideal.

Davina served the meal in a daze of gauzy unbelievable daydreams in which all manner of impossible things suddenly seemed dramatically possible.

Now, she told herself breathlessly as she cleared the plates from the main course, scraping them into the waste-bin before soaking them in hot water and then hurrying to serve the pudding, she knew why there had never been anyone else in her life: it had been because fate had already chosen Gregory for her. Because fate had known that he was there, that he existed; that he lived and breathed … even if she hadn’t.

Her body completely still, she stared out of the kitchen window, lost in her dreams, and then abruptly and painfully jolted herself back to reality by reminding herself that she was probably reading far too much into what he had said to her, in the way he had looked at her. Achingly she wished she had someone, a friend in whom she could confide, whose advice she could seek, with whom she could discuss the wonder and excitement of what had happened.

Gregory deliberately waited almost a week before getting in touch with her. A week was just long enough for her to have begun to lose hope, but nowhere near long enough for her to have even begun to forget about him.

He telephoned her, using his office telephone.

Davina had just returned from doing some shopping. She picked up the receiver and said the number, her heart shuddering to a frantic standstill of shock and pleasure when she heard Gregory’s voice.

So many times over the last six days she had mentally relived those moments when he had walked into the kitchen, the things he had said, the way he had looked, and, with each day that passed, so her belief in herself, in the message his eyes had silently given her, had diminished.

And now, just when she had been on the verge of giving up hope, of accepting that she had foolishly read far too much into what had happened, he had rung her.

And then as abruptly as her hopes had swung upwards they were dashed again as he said formally, ‘I’m sorry I haven’t rung before. I’ve been away on business. I just wanted to ring to thank you for a marvellous meal last week.’

He was merely ringing to thank her. A polite bread-and-butter telephone call, that was all, Davina acknowledged dully.

On the other end of the line Gregory smiled to himself. He could almost taste her disappointment.

He waited a few seconds and then added casually, ‘There’s a very good musical on at the Palace in Manchester at the moment. I don’t know if you’ve seen it, but I’ve been given some complimentary tickets and I was wondering if you’d care to see it with me. The tickets are for tomorrow evening. Rather short notice, I’m afraid.’

He was asking her out! Her. Like a rider on a roller-coaster, her hopes soared again. Both her hand and her voice were trembling as she thanked him and accepted the invitation, ignoring the small warning voice that reminded her that she would have to get her father’s approval and that tomorrow evening was his bridge evening and he would expect her to provide a supper for himself and his cronies, since it was his turn to host it.

Well satisfied with his progress, Gregory made arrangements to pick her up the following evening.

He didn’t live locally, but rented a small flat in Manchester, preferring to keep his work and his private lives apart. He had a company car, and one of the first things he had learned in his first job was how to ensure that his expenses claims covered his own personal motoring costs as well as the travelling he did for his employers.

Not that he overdid things. Gregory knew very well how to temper greed with caution. It was one of the things he was best at.

He was having a good day today. He picked up his paper and turned to the stocks and shares section. If he had one appetite that was not wholly under his own control, it was not, as with so many of his peers, sex; sex was something he enjoyed for the pleasure it gave him and the control over the women who enjoyed the benefits of his skill and experience. No, Gregory’s weakness was the thrill of tension and excitement that he got from gambling.

Not gambling as in betting on horses, or visiting casinos. No, Gregory’s gambling took the form of highly calculated risks in the buying and selling of stocks and shares.

Over the years Gregory had had some spectacular successes with this, his own private, very private game, and he had also suffered some heavy losses.

He frowned as he remembered the last one. It had all but wiped out the special fund he kept for his investments, and for a month or two he had had to live very meagrely indeed, but today he felt lucky. All the omens were good. He picked up the paper, studying it avidly.

For once fate seemed to be on Davina’s side. When her father came home that evening, before she could mention Gregory’s invitation, he said curtly to her, ‘I shall be going out tomorrow night.’

‘But it’s your bridge night,’ Davina interrupted him.

Her father’s mouth thinned with displeasure. ‘I wish you would allow me the courtesy of finishing my conversations, Davina, instead of interrupting me. Yes, it is my bridge night, but there has been a slight alteration in the arrangements. The Hudsons have decided to take a short holiday and visit their son next week, and because of this they have asked if the venue of tomorrow’s meeting can be changed from here to their house, since it would have been their turn to host everyone the week they will be away.’

As she prepared her father’s supper Davina hummed under her breath. She couldn’t believe her good fortune. She closed her eyes, giving in to the temptation to let her imagination recreate for her a mental image of Gregory James. Tall, good-looking, and with a look in his eyes that made her ache with excitement.

She still couldn’t entirely believe that he had actually asked her out.

She told her father about the invitation after he had eaten, picking her time carefully and cautiously, and then holding her breath as he frowned. ‘Gregory James, you say. Hmm. A very bright young man. Well-mannered, as well. Not like some these days.’

Very slowly and carefully Davina released her pent-up breath. Her father, it seemed, approved of Gregory. She could scarcely believe her luck.

It took her virtually all afternoon the next day to decide what to wear for her date. Outfit after outfit was discarded as she went through her wardrobe, wishing she had had the courage to buy something as daring as the outfits Mandy had worn with such panache, and then being forced to admit that her father would never have permitted her to wear such short skirts, nor such striking colours.

In the end she settled for a cream linen skirt teamed with a neat floral blouse. Over it she could wear the cream mohair jacket she had knitted for herself the previous winter.

As an irrational extravagance, the last time she had been to Chester she had bought herself a pair of new shoes. They were all the rage, beige patent, almost flatties, with tiny heels and a large gold-rimmed flat buckle on the front. They matched her outfit exactly and she was lucky enough to have small enough feet to wear such pale-coloured shoes.

She was ready far too soon, of course, her hair combed as straight as she could get it, a defiant touch of blue eyeshadow on her eyelids, pale pink lipstick on her mouth. She ached for the courage to line her eyes with the black kohl that everyone was wearing, but cringed from her father’s reaction should she do so. He didn’t approve of make-up of any kind, but she defiantly refused to give in completely.

Her father was still at home when Gregory arrived. To her surprise and delight, he actually invited Gregory into his study and offered him a glass of sherry.

Davina, of course, wasn’t included in the invitation, but she didn’t mind. She went upstairs and surreptitiously checked her appearance, staring anxiously into the mirror. If only her hair were thicker, straighter. She wondered if it would look any better if she coloured it lighter or if somehow she could cut herself a thicker fringe. She wished too that she were taller. All the girls in the magazines were tall, with endless, endless legs.

She sighed fretfully. There were so many things about herself she’d like to change if only she could. What on earth could a man like Gregory possibly see in her?

Downstairs in Alan Carey’s study, Gregory displayed the charm and good manners which so often had blinded people to his real nature. Alan Carey seemed as easy to deceive as all the rest.

It was a slow, careful courtship. Within weeks Gregory knew quite well that there was virtually nothing that Davina would not do for him, although it was not Davina who was important but her father. Davina was no use to him without her father’s money. And so, in effect, although it was Davina he took out and dated, it was actually her father to whom he was paying court.

For six months they exchanged nothing more than relatively chaste kisses. Only occasionally did Gregory assume a mock passion, for which he always apologised, claiming to Davina that it was his love for her that threatened his self-control.

Davina, with no experience of any kind to illuminate her sexual darkness, accepted what he said, and, if when she left him and was lying awake in bed her body ached rebelliously for an intimacy that had nothing to do with the kind of kisses Gregory gave her, she told herself severely that she was lucky to have someone who treated her with so much respect.

It was a time when, although the media might have given out an image of teenagers eagerly and freely enjoying what was termed ‘the sexual revolution’, in fact in country areas, away from the freedom of cities like London, where young people lived away from home and their parents’ watchful eyes, many of the old shibboleths still existed. And one of these was still that nice girls did not ‘do it’, or at least not until they were engaged, and then only very discreetly, so that it was something they discussed in nervous excited whispers, and only with other girls in the same situation.

So, while her body wantonly ached with a need whose fulfilment was only something Davina vaguely understood, her mind, her upbringing told her that it was right that Gregory should be so restrained with her, that it was out of love, out of respect for her; and she contented herself with rosy, breathlessly exciting daydreams of how different things would be if he actually asked her to marry him. Then there would be no need for restraint between them, then … She moved restlessly in her bed, turning over on to her stomach, her hand pressed against her lower body and then hastily, guiltily removed.

She had started waking up out of her sleep, brought abruptly from its depths by the intensity of the powerful rhythmic contractions of her body, shocked and disturbed by such a physical phenomenon, and yet at the same time delighted and awed by this glimpse of the pleasure it could afford her, naïvely assuming that, if her dreams of him could bring her so much pleasure, when Gregory did become her lover the pleasure would be even greater.

It was her father who announced that he had invited Gregory to spend Christmas Day with them, and, when after church on Christmas morning Gregory presented her with an engagement ring while her father looked on in approval, Davina was too thrilled with happiness and love to question the fact that her father had obviously known that Gregory was going to give her the ring before she had, or that Gregory had not actually asked her if she wished to become engaged to him.

The wedding date was set for the following summer. Davina was pleased that her father approved of Gregory; she was happier than she had ever believed possible.

They were married the following June. It had been agreed that the young couple would move in with Davina’s father rather than buy their own home, an arrangement that had been made between Davina’s father and Gregory without either of them consulting her, but Davina was too blissfully in love with Gregory to care.

They were honeymooning in Italy. She felt dizzy with excitement at the thought of finally being alone with him, alone and married!

On the way from the airport to their hotel all she could think was that tonight she would lie in Gregory’s arms. Tonight she would become his truly and completely.

She looked towards him, wanting to reach out and touch him, but Gregory hated public displays of affection. Suddenly she felt shy, nervous … very unsure of herself.

It was hot in the coach and Gregory didn’t seem to be aware of her discomfort. He was talking animatedly to the courier, a pretty blonde girl who had met them at the airport.

Suddenly Davina felt very alone, very insecure. There was a huge lump in her throat. She ached for Gregory to turn towards her, to hold her hand.

The anticipation she had felt suddenly turned to a cold, leaden feeling of fear and panic. It was a sensation that persisted for the rest of the day, and she couldn’t understand it.

Their room was smaller, much smaller than she had imagined from the brochure. It had twin beds instead of the double she had expected, and the balcony overlooked not the sea, but the rear of the hotel.

When she commented on this to Gregory he told her that the courier had explained to him that there had been a mix-up with the bookings. In actual fact, Gregory had changed the booking so that he could pocket the difference between the room they had booked and this much cheaper one. Davina’s father had paid for their honeymoon as a wedding present, and the difference between the two rooms would provide their spending money while they were here.

The room felt airless and stuffy. Davina felt oddly light-headed, sick almost.

Gregory was saying something about going down to the bar for a drink.

Dusk was just falling, her body ached with tiredness from the strain of the day, and nothing was happening as she had expected. For one thing, she had somehow imagined that they would be more alone, less surrounded by other holidaymakers and the efficient courier who seemed to have attached herself to them. For another, she had expected Gregory to be different. After all, they were married now … Now there was no need for him to treat her with restraint.

Her eyes were over-bright with foolish tears. What had she expected? she asked herself as she heard the door close behind him. That he would pick her up and carry her to the bed, that he would undress her and then slowly and thoroughly make love to her? Things weren’t like that these days. She was a modern young woman, she told herself firmly. Of course Gregory wanted a drink. It had been a hot, tiring journey, and while he was gone she might as well unpack their things. She could have a shower and then be all pretty and cool for him when he came back. It never even occurred to her that Gregory might have asked her if she wanted a cool drink in the company of her new husband! Determinedly she pushed aside her sense of somehow having been abandoned, and unlocked their cases.

Gregory came back just in time to change for dinner, and Davina, who, after her shower, had dithered over whether or not to change into the ultra-feminine and frilly broderie anglaise trousseau shortie robe she had bought for herself, was glad that she had put on a dress instead when Gregory disappeared into the bathroom, firmly locking the door behind him.

When he came out fifteen minutes later his skin gleamed; he smelled of soap, and, even slicked back off his head, his hair still made her want to reach out and stroke her fingers through it.

The sight of him, the smell of him, the reality of him banished her earlier panic, and she ached to throw herself into his arms, to have the confidence, the experience to tease him with kisses and caresses until he growled that what he wanted was not dinner but her, but she knew awkwardly that she just wasn’t that kind of girl, that she did not have that kind of self-confidence, and so instead she sat miserably through the dinner she had not wanted, her throat closing up with a misery she could not explain as the blonde courier hovered over their table, chatting animatedly with Gregory while ignoring her.

It was late, almost midnight, when they finally went up to their room. Gregory had been drinking steadily all evening. He swayed slightly as he unlocked their bedroom door.

The atmosphere inside the bedroom hit them like a muggy hot wall. The room had no air-conditioning, and the windows were screwed down so that they could not be opened.

Davina showered quickly, trying to ignore the headache tensing her scalp.

When she came out of the bathroom wearing her new robe and its matching shortie nightdress, the broderie anglaise threaded with pale blue satin ribbon, Gregory was lying on one of the twin beds.

He looked up at her and pronounced, ‘Very virginal. What are you going to do? Take it home complete with appropriate bloodstain to show Daddy?’

Davina stared at him in disbelief. She started to tremble a little, aware that something was wrong, but not knowing what.

After all her dreams, the reality of Gregory’s lovemaking shocked her into a silence that prevented everything other than one brief, sharp sound of pain leaving her lips as he possessed her.

She didn’t even cry. Not then, not until she was alone in her own single bed and Gregory was safely asleep, snoring in the other bed.

Was this what she had waited for … wanted … ached for … dreamed about? Was this, then, sex? Where was the exquisite build-up of sensation, the aching, consuming urgency of need, the quick, fierce pangs of sensation that exploded into that rhythmic starburst of pleasure she had known in her dreams and in waking from them? If this was sex, then what had they been?

When Davina returned from her honeymoon she felt immeasurably older—and wiser; the scales had not so much fallen from her eyes as been ripped from them.

After the fourth night of enduring Gregory’s increasingly uncomfortable penetration of her now painful body, on the fifth night she turned quietly and sadly away from him.

Gregory made no attempt to coax or persuade her, simply returning to his own bed with a small shrug.

Feeling shocked, distressed, and most of all guilty because she was not able to enjoy his lovemaking, not able to respond to him since at times she almost wished she were here on her own rather than here with him, she was relieved to return home and to escape into the familiar routine of her life there.

She had no close friends to whom she could confide her doubts and feelings of guilt and despair. Her family doctor was old, and a friend of her father’s, and even if she had been able to pluck up the courage to consult anyone about her growing dislike of sex she could never have explained to him the way she felt, the tension she felt whenever Gregory touched her, the dread almost.

It was her fault, of course. It had to be, and she knew that Gregory must be as disappointed as she was herself, even though he made no complaints.

She was glad when she had her period and was relieved of the necessity of having to lie tensely in bed praying that Gregory would not touch her, and yet even in her relief she was conscious of other feelings, of a heavy, leaden sense of somehow having lost something; of having been cheated of something.

She refused to allow herself to remember those tormenting pre-marriage dreams, the feeling she had experienced. She had just imagined them; they hadn’t been real. If they had been, she would have experienced them with Gregory, she told herself firmly.

It was on the night of their first wedding anniversary that Gregory told her that during their honeymoon he had made love to the courier.

The moment he told her she knew that it was the truth. He had come home late, too late for the special dinner she had prepared. Her father was out playing bridge. They had had a row. She had promised herself that tonight she would try, really try to overcome her dislike of sex, but then Gregory had come home late, and she had smelled the perfume on him immediately.

When she asked him whose it was he had told her about the girl he had been seeing. A girl who, unlike her, was good in bed and who knew how to please a man.

Shocked, distraught with despair, Davina had demanded to know why, then, he had married her.

Gregory had told her.

‘For your father’s money,’ he said brutally. ‘What the hell other reason could there be? Why the hell would a man … any man want you? And don’t bother going running to your father over this, Davina. He thinks you’re as useless as I do. Why do you think he was so keen to see us married? A divorce is the last thing he’d want.’

A divorce! The brutality of the ugly words hit her like a blow. Divorce was something that happened to other people. In Davina’s world it was still seen as a stigma, as a sign of failure on the part of a wife, as a wife and as a woman.

The very sound of the word terrified Davina. It would be a public acknowledgement of her failure.

It was only later, curled up into a tight ball of misery on her own side of their bed, that she confronted the true enormity of what Gregory had told her.

He did not love her. He had never loved her. She felt sick inside … not at his lack of love, but at her own folly in believing that he might have loved her. From this point onwards Davina had had to acknowledge that their marriage was a sham.

Outwardly their lives went on as normal. Occasionally Gregory made love to her, and when he did Davina gritted her teeth and prayed that she might get pregnant. They both wanted children, but for very different reasons.

Davina’s father had started dropping hints about grandchildren, but both Davina and Gregory knew that what he wanted was grandsons.

Gregory told Davina that it was her fault. She underwent a whole series of tests before a young and sympathetic female doctor suggested to her that the reason she had not conceived might lie with Gregory and not with her, since they could find no reason why she should not conceive.

Davina contemplated putting the doctor’s theory to Gregory with a certain amount of grim mental despair. She had changed from the girl who had married Gregory in such blissful ignorance, even though barely twenty-four months separated the woman she now was from that girl.

No, she would not tell Gregory what the doctor had said, she acknowledged wearily as she drove home.

Slowly she started to forge a life for herself. A life apart from Gregory’s. She was a married woman now, not a girl.

She ran the house smoothly and efficiently, and, since both her father and Gregory rejected any suggestions she tried to make that she could fill in some of her spare time by working for the company, she looked for another avenue to occupy her.

Davina needed to keep busy. That was the only way she had of keeping at bay her despair over her marriage. If she just kept herself busy enough she did not need to think about her marriage at all. She did not need to think about the fact that Gregory was unfaithful to her. She knew that because he made no attempt to hide it now.

In front of her father he used the pretext of work as an excuse for his absences. To her in private he didn’t bother to conceal what he was really doing.

It shamed Davina more than she could bear to admit that she was actually sometimes glad, grateful that she was not the recipient of his sexual favours. Now she dreaded those times when he did touch her. Just occasionally, when her concentration lapsed, she sometimes remembered how she had felt before she married him, but she fought hard to keep that kind of weakness at bay. She was married to him, and at least he had the discretion to conduct his affairs outside their own small social circle. Davina had seen the way the other wives looked at Gregory, and she dreaded the day he returned any of their interest.

Sometimes she was sickened by her own weakness in staying with him, but she was too afraid, too conventional to break out of their marriage—and to what purpose, anyway? There was none. She was empty of all hope, all pleasure, all desire; a woman unwanted, unloved and undesired by the man to whom she was married.

But she was married and she must make the best of it. Behave like an adult and not a child.

Wryly Davina shook her head, dismissing her thoughts of the past. What was the point in dwelling on the past? She had chosen to marry Gregory, no one had forced her, and it was pointless wondering what her life might have been had she married someone like Giles. Gregory was dead now, and his death had brought her far more important things to worry about than the emotional barrenness of her own life.

It had been cowardice, and a too strongly rooted dread of offending against her father’s idea of convention, that had kept her in her marriage; it was that which had trapped her just as much as Gregory’s manipulation of her. She couldn’t blame everything on him.

Not even the failure of the company?

She closed her eyes tiredly. That was a different matter. What on earth had prompted him to get involved in something as volatile and dangerous as the currency market, and with money that should have been used to secure the future of the company and of its employees?

How much real chance did she have of finding a backer … an investor? Virtually none, the bank manager had told her grimly. These were difficult times for industry; money was tight, especially the kind of risk-money involved in supporting something like Carey’s.

Davina turned into the drive. She was home. Home; she smiled mirthlessly to herself as she stopped the car and got out.

She had lived in this house all her life and she felt very little affinity towards it. It had never truly been hers. During her father’s lifetime it had been his, and after his death … Well, he might have willed it to her, but she had never truly felt it belonged to her.

It had been Gregory, during one of his many affairs, who had produced the interior designer responsible for its present décor; she and Gregory had been having a passionate affair at the time, and even though she knew it was quite ridiculous, since she knew Gregory could never have had sex with her here at home, Davina felt somehow as though the very fabrics the woman had chosen were impregnated with the musky odour of sex.

She loathed the brilliant harsh colours the woman had chosen, the dramatic blacks and reds, the—to her—ugly rawness of so much colour and emotion. They made the rooms seem claustrophobic, reminding Davina of that awful honeymoon hotel with its cramped room and lack of air.

As she unlocked the front door and walked into the hall she wondered with a certain wry amusement if she was always to associate sex with a lack of breathable air. She also wondered even more wryly if, had it not been for Matt, she would ever have felt this faint stirring of curiosity about Giles. If all she had ever known was Gregory’s lovemaking, somehow she doubted it.

It had been a long time now since she had finally recognised that Gregory might not have been the skilled lover he had always claimed. Five years, to be precise.

But now wasn’t the time to think of Matt.

‘Lucy, I’m home.’

Giles tensed as he heard the sound of pans being slammed in the kitchen. Increasingly these days he dreaded coming home, dreaded the inevitable row that followed his arrival.

Ducking his head to avoid the house’s low beams, he walked slowly towards the kitchen. Outside the closed door, he paused, mentally willing away his involuntary mental image of opening the door and finding not Lucy, his wife, waiting there for him, her face sharp with temper, but Davina.

Davina, who always looked so cool and calm; Davina, whom he had never once heard raise her voice; Davina, who was always so relaxed, so easy to be with, her manner directly the opposite of that of his emotional, highly volatile wife.

He must stop thinking like this, he told himself fiercely as he took a deep breath and then pushed open the kitchen door.

Lucy was standing by the sink.

She was tall and slim, her thick, dark red curls a fiery glow of colour round her small pale face. Her eyes, green and almond-shaped, glittered with temper. Giles could almost see it vibrating through her tense body as she glared at him.

‘Where the hell have you been?’ she demanded. ‘You were supposed to be back at half-past five.’

‘I had to talk to Davina.’

‘Oh, you did, did you? And did you tell her that you were leaving? That she wasn’t going to have your broad manly shoulder to cry on for much longer?’

Giles winced at the bitterness, the acidity in her voice.

She had gone too far. She could see it from Giles’s face, and for a moment she was afraid. She had thought she had learned to control these rages, these outbursts of temper fuelled by fear and insecurity.

‘Well, I hope you’ve had something to eat,’ she told Giles, ‘because there certainly isn’t anything here for you. Half-past five, you said. It’s almost seven.’

‘I’m not hungry,’ Giles told her wearily. ‘I’ll make myself a sandwich later.’

‘Why bother?’ Lucy goaded him, driven relentlessly towards self-destruction by her fear and anguish. ‘Why not ring Davina and have dinner with her? She’s a wonderful cook … although rumour has it that she wasn’t much good in bed. Still, that won’t bother you, will it, darling? You haven’t had much interest in that department yourself recently, have you? Or is it just me you don’t want?’

‘Lucy, please,’ Giles begged her wearily. ‘Not now. I——’

‘You what? You don’t want to discuss it. All right, let’s discuss something else, then, shall we? Like your telling Davina that you weren’t going to stay. You did tell her that, didn’t you, Giles?’

Giles sighed. ‘I … I tried. Look,’ he said desperately when he saw Lucy’s face, ‘it won’t be for much longer. Only another few weeks. She needs me, Lucy.’

He knew the moment he said it that he had said the wrong thing, but as he watched the way Lucy’s face closed up, her eyes as hard and flat as dull river pebbles, he also knew it was too late to call back his words.

As Lucy slammed down the pan she had been holding and walked past him he said desperately, ‘Lucy, please try to understand …’

As she opened the door she turned on him, feral as a maimed cat. ‘I do understand,’ she told him. ‘I understand that Davina James is more important to you than I am.’ As she slammed the door the whole house seemed to shake.

It was an old house, parts of it dating back to the fourteenth century, a long low-timbered building. They had bought it eight years ago when they first moved here shortly after their marriage.

They had been so happy then. So much, so passionately in love. When had it all changed? Why?

He had thought himself so blessed when he met Lucy, bemused by the way she had flirted with him, teased him and coaxed him, dazzled by her fire, by the life, the energy that filled and drove her. She had been a passionate lover, overwhelming all his hesitation, overwhelming him.

He had been thrilled, disbelieving almost when she had told him she wanted to marry him, shy, hesitant, unsure of him for the first time in their relationship. He had loved her so much then. And he still loved her now. At least, a part of him did; another part of him …

He tensed as he heard the front door slam and then the sound of her car engine starting up.

It had been unjust of her to accuse him of not wanting her any more. She had been the one to reject him, to turn away when he reached for her, to let him know without words that his body, his touch no longer aroused her.

Helplessly Giles sat down, his head in his hands. Maybe for the sake of his marriage he should have stood firm and told Davina that he could not stay on. Maybe he should have done, but the truth of it was that he hadn’t wanted to. The truth was that he had looked at Davina and had ached to take her in his arms, to hold her, to protect her. Davina was that kind of woman. She did not, as Lucy had always done, challenge his masculinity, she complemented it. Where Lucy was all fire and passion, Davina was all loving, comforting serenity, and something within him ached to have that serenity wrapped around him.

He was so tired. Tired of Lucy’s wild outbursts of temper, her volatility, of all the things about her that had once held him in such thrall. Including her passion? Her love for him?

Sick at heart, he groaned helplessly to himself.