by Daphne Clair
A WILDER SHORE
Daphne Clair
She gave five years away to the wrong man
At eighteen Elise had eagerly accepted Peter Westwood's engagement ring. He was handsome and ambitious, and her parents approved.
Then she met Shard Cortland--a construction man whose effect on her she found hard to resist. But she opted for the "good" life and hastily married Peter.
Now, after Peter's death and five years later, Shard had reappeared wanting to marry her. Their mutual attraction remained unchanged, but marriage with Shard would be risky: she doubted his integrity and knew he had no use for love!
CHAPTER ONE
'Are .you sure you don't want me to stay, darling?' The rare endearment emphasised Katherine Ashley's concern for her newly widowed daughter. Turning to her husband, she appealed for his support. 'Howard, don't you think she should come home with us?' Then, without waiting for his answer, she spoke again to Elise. 'You shouldn't be alone, tonight—we'll take you home. Howard --'
'But I want to be alone, Mother,' Elise said evenly, the calmness of her voice exactly a match for the serenity of her pale face, its purity of line emphasised by the smoothly drawn back style of her fair hair and the limpid green of her eyes, unmarred by any sign of tears.
Her father looked at her, slim and almost fragile-looking in the very plain black dress that somehow seemed to emphasise and heighten her femininity, an impression that was belied by the firm set of her pretty mouth, the determined set of her chin. He was sure she had not shed' a tear since the police had called in the middle of the night three days before to inform her that her husband had been the victim of a fatal car crash. He was proud of his daughter, a pride faintly mixed with a dim sense of guilt because he had never really taken the time to know her when she was a child—and she had grown up so quickly and married so young. Now she was a composed young woman of twenty-five, and Katherine, who had always been a somewhat exacting mother, was offering her comfort as to a child.
'Dear --' Katherine's normally austere features softened as she touched her daughter's arm in persuasion, 'you've been very brave, you don't want to give in now, and become morbid on your own—come to us for a while until you get over --'
'I'm quite all right. Mother. I won't go to pieces, I promise.'
But her green eyes lifted to Howard's face, looking past her mother, and he thought that he read a slight flicker of appeal in them.
'Kate!' he said, and his wife turned in astonishment at the peremptory note in his voice. It was a note which his numerous employees would have recognised at once, and jumped to obey, from the newest office boy to the managers of his branch stores, but Katherine had never heard it in a remark addressed to her before.
'Howard?' she said, surprised and a little indignant.
'Elise knows what she wants, I think. You can phone her tomorrow in case she changes her mind. You know you can come home any time, Elise, and stay as long as you want.'
'Thank you, Dad.'
He knew she didn't want it at all, and wouldn't come. And for no reason his mind went back to a time many years ago when he had been away on one of his frequent business trips, and had brought her back a huge, elaborate and very expensive doll's cradle. He recalled her thanking him in just that tone of voice, conveying both appreciation for the thought that had prompted it, and a complete indifference to the gift itself. Katherine had said later that at eleven, Elise was growing a little old for dolls, and he had felt relieved because then he understood. Next time he had brought her scented soap and talcum powder and a manicure set in a leather case, but he didn't remember that her reaction had been any different.
He said gruffly, 'Come on, Katherine.'
Obediently she took his arm, but with a faint air of displeasure, and Elise moved forward to accompany them to the door. She presented her cheek for her mother's kiss, and looked a little surprised when her father bent to touch his lips to her smooth, cool skin. He didn't remember when he had ever seen Elise kiss anyone voluntarily, even her husband. For the first time he wondered if she and Peter had been happy. He had always taken it for granted before. At eighteen she had seemed eager enough to marry him, and he and Katherine had been rather relieved, because although Elise was basically a good girl, there had been occasional signs of a latent and disturbing wildness in her. A good steady marriage with a man a few years older than herself had seemed the very thing for her...
When they had gone, the smooth purr of her father's expensive car receding down the driveway, Elise locked the door and let out a long sigh of luxurious relief. For a few moments she allowed her shoulders to sag, her head to droop forward against a slim hand on her forehead. But when she glanced up and saw herself in the hall mirror looking like that—weary and lost—she straightened up and walked into the roomy L-shaped lounge, looking about her for ashtrays to empty, cushions to straighten, something to occupy her hands and deaden her mind.
It had all been done. Her mother's efficiency, of course, aided by the able Mrs Benton who came in three times a week at her mother's house and had been only too glad to help with the necessary hospitality and subsequent cleaning up today.
The room still smelled faintly of cigarette smoke, and Elise crossed to the big side windows and opened them up. The day had clouded over late in the afternoon, and a cold breeze blew the curtains into the room and made her shiver, but she stood there looking out at the garden where she had planted a mixture of native and imported plants five years ago when she and Peter, newly married, had moved into their brand-new home.
The roses had done well, reds, golds and creams blooming fulsomely on sturdy, prickled stems. The dainty Japanese maple in one corner of the neat lawn was a respectable tree, already ten feet tall. The lacy-leaved red kowhai too, had been a quick grower. In an angle of the house a silver tree fern shaded pink and red fuchsias, and over near the front fence the kauri she had planted last year was still only a stripling. Peter had teased her about that. 'In a hundred years' time it might be a proper tree. Do you plan to be about then?'
'Don't you?' she had asked him, smiling. She couldn't say, 'Our children might be.' They had stopped talking about that, last year, or perhaps the year before. She wasn't sure. But there had been no undercurrent in their bantering about the kauri. Perhaps a suburban garden on the outskirts of Auckland wasn't quite the place for a forest giant that might live a thousand years and attain a girth of mammoth proportions, but she liked to think that it would be there after they had gone, perhaps after the house was gone...
Elise smiled faintly, and bit her lip, turning away dry-eyed from the garden and the memories. The curtain lifted and draped itself over a small side-table, pulling at a small figurine and lifting it, dragging until the ornament fell harmlessly on to the thick pile of the carpet.
She picked it up and replaced it on the table, and shut the windows. Instantly the room seemed stuffy and close, although the cigarette smell had gone. A box of expensive filter-tips lay open on the table by the door, and she put out a hand to close it as she passed, her fingers lingering on the tooled leather of the lid, opening it up again, recalling the sharp taste of tobacco smoke, the slow pleasure of drawing it into her mouth and throat...
Sharply she flicked the lid down again. She had given up smoking years ago. She had not refused Dr Burton's proffered sedatives to give in to the dubious relaxing effects of the insidiously risky cigarette.
No. She would cope, as she always did, without drugs, without crutches of any kind.
She supposed the hollow feeling in her stomach was hunger. It didn't feel like hunger, but since she had forced herself to swallow a cup of coffee and two pieces of toast at breakfast time, she hadn't eaten. There had been plenty of food for the people who invade
d the house after the funeral. She had made sure of the sandwiches, the scones, the sherry ... She supposed there would be plenty left in the kitchen, tidily put away by Mrs Benton. Perhaps she should make some tea and have a leftover sandwich.
The sharp buzz of the doorbell interrupted her thoughts. It would be a messenger with flowers, arriving late, or another telegram, she supposed. She didn't want to answer the door. It was supposed to be all over now. They could leave the flowers on the doorstep, bring the telegram tomorrow. Go away.
The bell rang again, with a short, peremptory sound. She waited, standing still, thinking, go away, go away.
They didn't. The next peal was prolonged, impatient. Afterwards, there was silence but no sound of retreating steps moving off the tiled porch, down the driveway.
Again the unknown caller pressed the bell, insistent and determined. 'Damn you,' Elise murmured tiredly, without anger, and went unhurriedly to answer it at last.
She opened the door without curiosity, noting as she did so that the light was fading, standing just inside the doorway while her fingers held the edge of the door, her face a cold mask of polite enquiry, her feet placed precisely in their high-heeled black shoes, the plain dress skimming a lovely body that held itself straight and taut so that in stillness she looked almost stiff, nearly angular,, although all her movements held a quick grace.
The man who stood facing her was tall, giving her some inches even in her high heels. He wore a suit, but he wore it as though it was, or might have been, worn jeans and a bush shirt. One hand was thrust into a trouser pocket, and the other was leaning on the wall above the bell-push, his thumb poised to ring again. His attitude brought his shoulders hunching forward, so that when she opened the door he seemed to lean over her almost threateningly. The impression was underscored by the expression on his dark face, which was grim. He had an aggressive chin, a stubborn mouth that curved equally easily into cruelty or amusement, straight dark brows over flint-grey eyes, and crisp dark hair that always looked as though he dragged a comb through it impatiently every morning and occasionally remembered to have cut.
He didn't greet her, but he straightened up and looked at her, a comprehensive, almost insolent look, except that there was no deliberate insolence there, just a calm certainly that he had every right to look at her that way and that she knew it.
She should have been angry, because she had never allowed Shard Cortland the rights he claimed, and a long time ago she had made it clear to him that she never would. But she felt no anger, just a distant relief that in fact she could feel nothing at all. It was nice, she discovered, to. feel nothing. She wished the numbness could last for the rest of her life.
Then he moved, and she instinctively stepped back, because he was walking into the house as though he had every right there, too, and she knew that it was no use trying to stop him.
He took the door from her hand and pushed it shut behind him and said, 'You're pale. Are you all right?'
'Yes,' she said, and waited. She might have said, 'Please come in,' or 'How kind of you to call,' but with Shard the ordinary courtesies were irrelevant. So were a lot of other ordinary things, when he was around. It had always been like that. She had not seen him since her marriage, but nothing had changed.
At that thought, a faint, faraway warning tingled in her brain somewhere, momentarily stopped her breath. But it passed quickly and when Shard looked round, found the open doorway of the lounge and went through it, she followed him.
He waited for her to sit down, looking at her, but she had the distinct feeling that he had already assessed the room, the paintings on the walls, the thickness of the carpet—and that he was quietly amused by it.
She sat on the sofa, facing him as he stood by an armchair near the fireplace with its gleaming chain-screen. She carefully crossed her ankles and folded her hands in her lap.
He looked at the discreet mahogany fitting built into the corner behind her and said, 'Is that where you keep drinks?'
'Yes.'
Before she could offer him anything, he said, 'I'll get you one.' She sat where she was as she heard him open the cabinet, and when he asked, 'Dry sherry all right?'
she said quietly, 'Yes. Thank you.'
His hand appeared over her shoulder holding a glass, the liquid faintly moving against the sides, and she took it from him, glancing only as high as the sleeve of his jacket as she murmured her thanks. It was a good jacket in fine dark wool, and the expanding watch strap she glimpsed beneath his shirt cuff looked like real gold.
She said, as he came around the sofa, 'Would you turn on the lamp—on the table there. Thank you.'
A pool of light surrounded them, and she wished she had asked him to switch on the central one, a modern chandelier, instead. The shadows in the far corners of the room seemed to draw the sofa and the deep armchair which he had taken, closer together.
She sipped at her sherry, savouring the sharpness against her tongue. 'I didn't know you were in Auckland,' she commented.
'I've only been here a week, this time,' he said. 'I saw the funeral notice in the paper.'
She turned the glass in her hand. There had been a lot of people at the church. Her family and Peter's were both well known in the business community. 'I didn't see you among the mourners,' she said. She was glad she had not seen him. But she should show appreciation of his coming.
Shard said, 'I'm not a mourner.'
Elise stopped turning her glass, the distant warning again stopping her breath for a brief space of time. She said, 'You—weren't at the church?'
There was a short silence before he answered, but she kept her eyes on the sherry that remained in her glass. 'I wasn't at the church. I waited for you—until everyone had gone.'
She glanced up then, surprise getting through the icy indifference that enveloped her. He had been watching the house, waiting until she was alone.
She said, 'My mother wanted to stay with me. Or take me home.'
He didn't answer, but she saw in his eyes that he had known she would choose solitude. That he had only to wait.
With a faint stirring of anger, she said, 'I wanted to be alone.'
A very slight quirk at the comer of his mouth acknowledged the hint, but he didn't take it.
Elise quelled her anger without effort and said, 'It was kind of you to come.'
Shard's eyes narrowed. 'I'm not kind—you know it.'
'It's six years,' she shrugged. 'You might have changed.'
'I haven't.'
He was watching her, waiting for a reaction that she wouldn't give. Once she would have found a painful pleasure in withholding it. Now there wasn't even that. She was glad of her own indifference.
'She said, 'You haven't poured a drink for yourself. Please --'
'I don't want one.' Shard was relaxed in the deep leather chair, his hands lying along the arms. They were strong hands with long fingers and blunt, short-cut nails. 'Would you like another?' he asked.
'No, thank you.' There was still an inch of golden-brown liquid in her glass, but with her hand curved about it he couldn't see that.
'Has it been very bad?' he asked abruptly.
'It's been—a nightmare,' she said bleakly. Then she added, 'But I'm very lucky. People have been wonderful. And my family—they've helped me a lot.'
'Yes.' It came out a flat, expressionless monosyllable. At one time it might have needled her, made her flare up at him, but now she glanced at him once, her eyes coolly blank, and lifted her glass to finish her drink and sit politely waiting for him to take his leave.
He didn't. He rose and took the glass from her and put it on the table beside the lamp. Then he turned to face her again and unexpectedly put his hand under her chin, lifting her face to the light. His fingers were warm and hard and when she made an involuntary movement of escape, they tightened and hurt her.
She didn't complain, and her eyes held no particular resentment as they met the cold blaze of his.
He released her,
and said, 'Have they been feeding you tranquillisers?'
'No. The doctor gave me a sedative the first night, but I've refused everything since.'
'What about food?'
'I was just about to get myself something when you rang,'
Shard swung away from her and left the room, and she heard him opening doors until he found the kitchen. She should go and tell him she could manage, he wasn't needed—or wanted. But she suddenly felt tired, and it had never been any good telling Shard anything ... She would only exhaust herself and get nowhere. Elise leaned her head back against the sofa and closed her eyes.
The carpet muffled his footsteps when he came back, but she heard him put down the tray he had found on the table beside her, and opened her eyes. He had toasted some of the sandwiches and heated some slices of pizza pie, and made a pot of tea.
She said, 'I can't eat all that.'
'I'm hungry, too,' Shard told her, and began pouring tea into two cups. 'Here, you look as though you need something warm.'
She ate some sandwiches, refused the pie, and drank two cups of tea, and the empty feeling receded.
Shard took the tray back to the kitchen when she had finished, and she heard him rattling cups and plates as he washed up. She smiled faintly. She had never thought of Shard as domesticated. Maybe the years had tamed him a little, after all.
He came back into the room and she realised how far out she had been in thinking that. She stood up, hinting that he should consider his visit over. She started to thank him for what he had done, and was cut short. 'I'm not going yet, and you don't need to thank me. Sit down.'
When she didn't, he came to her and grasped her arms, not roughly but with purpose, and pushed her back on to the sofa. Then he sat beside her, and she was dismayed to find life trickling back into her nerves, her skin, awareness like pain bringing her back to full life again, like the blood surging back into numbed limbs, hurting that way.
She breathed carefully, trying to hold on to the blessed numbness, the restful indifference that had protected her before. She folded her hand as before and kept her eyes fixed on them, kept her fingers relaxed, tranquil-looking.
