by Daphne Clair
Slowly he said, 'Don't you remember? The night you gave in and agreed to marry me—you'd been fighting all the way until then. And then you suddenly went sweet and willing, and when I remarked on it you said it was because you'd just found out what I'd assumed you knew all along. "You never told me you were Cortland Construction" was what you said.'
'But, Shard --' she protested, 'it wasn't an answer! I didn't mean it like that!'
He stood up, looking down at her distressed eyes as they lifted to his face. 'It was an answer,' he said, 'however you meant it. It certainly marked the end of your resistance.'
'Yes, but—it wasn't that!'
She stood up, touched his arm in pleading, about to blurt out her uncertainty of six years ago, her distrust of her own judgment, the apparent confirmation of her fears when Shard had taken money from her grandfather and disappeared to Australia. Then it struck her that he might be just as savage about her unfounded suspicions as he was about her seemingly mercenary motives for marrying him.
She hesitated, her thoughts racing, then said, 'Shard, I want to explain --'
He took her hand and moved it from his arm as though, it was a piece of fluff or an importunate insect. 'Oh, no!' he said. 'At least spare me that.' He sounded weary and cynical and she knew that no matter What she said he wasn't going to believe her.
He was looking at her almost dispassionately. Her hands had fallen slackly to her sides and her shadowed eyes were dry, although there was a burning sensation behind them. His eyes rested indifferently on, her still slim waist, the little shadow in the deep neckline of her dress, the soft hair swept up above her nape into a chignon.
'Are you sure you don't want that divorce?' he asked her.
'Yes, I'm sure!' she said with an effort. 'For heaven's sake, don't you realise—I'm going to have your baby!'
'I see. Yes, I suppose the nasty-minded might find something to think about in a divorce under the circumstances. What with that, and the danger of being accused of leaving me because I'm threatened with receivership, you don't really have much choice, do you?'
'I don't know anyone with as nasty a mind as yours,' she snapped. 'My decision has nothing to do with either of those reasons. The thought of leaving you never even crossed my mind.'
'Just let's be clear On one thing,' he said coldly. 'I haven't asked you to sacrifice yourself on the altar of your duty to me, and I won't help you to do it. And the last thing I want is your pity. If you stay with me it's because you want to for whatever reasons you care to give yourself. So don't expect any gratitude from me.'
Through quivering lips she said, 'No. No, I won't.'
She pushed past him and left the room. The flat suddenly seemed too small, and she ran a bath and spent a long time just sitting on the porcelain edge and pleating the folds of her dress with her fingers, until the water was cooling and she had to add more hot before she undressed and got into it. The bathroom was the only place where she could lock the door—and lock Shard out.
CHAPTER ELEVEN
Elise. supposed the nightmare must end some time. She seemed to be going through the motions of living although her heart had died within her.
Shard was bringing home paperwork now, and working far into the night, although he always ensured that she went to bed early. In that sort of thing he was punctilious, never letting her carry anything heavy, always adamant on doing the dishes, insisting that she rest. If he was going to be late he invariably telephoned to let her know. But he never addressed a personal word to her; they might have been total strangers who happened to share a home and a bed by reason of some freak of circumstance. Even when he found her hanging over the basin in the bathroom one morning, pale and gasping, there was something impersonal in his touch as he guided her back to bed and made her stay there while he made toast and weak tea for her. And every morning after that he made it before she got up, forbidding her to move before she had had it.
Once or twice Elise tried to resist his distant care, and he turned a brief, blazing glance on her and said with an almost vicious undertone, 'Just stay there!'
And she did. Because she didn't want that to happen too often. Sometimes she thought anything would be an improvement on the remote impersonal consideration with which he usually treated her now, but the shock of being snarled at changed her mind.
She had forgotten to give him Cole's message, but Cole must have caught up with him at some time, because one day he said, 'Cole was asking after you.'
A little cautiously she said, 'That's nice of him.' Something that had been part of the misery surfaced in her and she said, 'We can't have the house now, can we?'
She thought Shard wasn't going to answer. Then he said, 'Not for a while, anyway.'
The hollow ache inside grew. 'What about the land?' she asked. 'Will we have to sell it?'
His mouth went grim. 'Maybe.'
Elise sat still, remembering the shushing of the wind in the trees along the slight slope to the cliff, the blue water that was gentle between them, the singing of the cicadas in the summer and the calling of the bush birds that inhabited their little piece of unspoilt nature. She had imagined how they would sit on the sheltered terrace in the summer and listen to the birds and watch the leaves lifting in a sea breeze and the tiny blue-grey butterflies drifting across the lawn. There wouldn't have been much lawn, because they wanted to keep the trees that were there undisturbed, but there was enough of a clearing for a patch of grass and some plants, maybe a hibiscus or two and some azaleas near the edge of the patch of bush, and a rosebed.
It wasn't really much like the place where they had spent their honeymoon, that had been much wilder and rougher and more remote, with heavy breakers pounding along the sands and gulls screaming defiance at the winds that pushed them inland from the sea, and rocky crags at each end of the beach with battered ngaio and pohutukawa clawing the steep edges of the cliffs. But somehow when she went there she always felt an echo of the passionate, lovely days and nights that she and Shard had spent on a wilder shore when it seemed that nothing existed but the two of them and the delight that they found in being together after the long, long waiting ...
Usually when Shard came to bed she was sleeping. If she woke when she heard him she would pretend to sleep anyway. Because now he never reached out his arms for her, never turned her to nestle into him, never stroked her hair or ran his fingers lightly over her body in invitation, or made sweet demands with his lips on her shoulder or nape.
But that night she woke fully and suddenly as he came into the room. He moved quietly and she lay still, pretending to sleep, until he lifted the covers and slid in beside her, but two feet away. It was always like that, now. She had been dreaming, and fragments of the dream returned as she listened to his breathing in the warm darkness. Shard laughing as they clambered over the rocks together as they had when they were first married, and still laughing as she slipped and fell into the surging water and was carried away from him screaming ...
Perhaps it was the horror of the dream that had woken her. She remembered it now in vivid, terrifying detail.
She moved restlessly, and knew that Shard had shifted his position too. She turned her head and in the darkness his eyes gleamed, open but unfathomable.
Tentatively she said, 'Shard?'
'What is it?' Perhaps it was the dark that made him sound more human than he usually did.
She moved nearer to him. 'I had a nightmare,' she whispered. Her hand reached out to touch his arm. 'Please hold me.'
He hesitated for only a moment, then his arms closed about her with great care, as though she was made of glass, and she put her cheek down on his chest and clung.
His breathing was deep and even as though he was asleep or nearly so, but when she moved her hand and it slipped inside the open edge of his pyjama top, it suddenly checked for an instant, and she knew he wasn't.
She hadn't intended anything but what she had said, to be held close to him for a little while until the beastli
ness of the dream receded. But now she wondered ... wondered if the closeness they had always found in lovemaking would still be there in spite of the bitter estrangement that existed, and if it was, surely it would help to break down the impenetrable barriers that Shard seemed to erect. She might be able to reach him in this one way, if no other...
She moved her head again, deliberately stroking now, touching him with her fingers, in remembered ways, until he moved and his hard hand grasped her wrist. And his voice in her hair said, 'What do you want, Elise?'
Against the pounding of his heart, she said, 'You know what I want.'
His hands dragged at her hair, and he turned so that she was pinned against the pillow with his thumbs hard against her cheekbones and his fingers still in her tangled hair. His eyes gleamed and his breath was on her lips. Tell me,' he commanded, his voice low.
'Please, Shard ‑' she whispered. Her body moved a little against the hardness of his in remembered longing.
Tell me what you want,' he said again, not moving.
'I want you—I want you to make love to me ...'
For a long moment he remained still, looking down at the white blur of her face, and she was suddenly afraid, afraid that he had dragged the words from her as a cruel joke, that he was going to reject her.
Then his head came slowly down and she felt his warm mouth claiming hers.
At first she was a little tense, but as he parted her lips with his and stroked her body with his hands she relaxed completely as the warmth of desire coursed gently through her. She knew that he had found the small changes in her body, his fingers lingering exploringly on the new firmness of her breasts, the slight roundness below her waist. And for a moment she was frightened again. But his kiss deepened as his hand lay on her stomach, until the unleashed passion of it hurt her lips and she whispered a protest.
He lifted his mouth and his hand moved again. The blind shifted in a little breeze from the window, and. she saw his face with light shafting across it from the street-lamp outside. His mouth was smiling.
'Is this what you want?' he asked her, his voice demanding an answer.
'Yes,' she whispered. 'Yes—oh, please yes, Shard --'
He made love to her in ways that he knew she liked best, that sent her mindless and dizzy with delight, and each time he shifted their positions or touched her in a new way, he would pause, making her tell him what she wanted, making her put it into words, whispering her need to him. And when finally he took her to the pinnacle of pleasure where no words were possible, she heard his soft laughter against her ear, and as her lips parted and her head fell back in ecstasy, she saw him lift his head, and in the light from the window his face was the face of her dream ...
The sound that tore out of her throat began as a cry of love, and ended as a scream of horror.
Shard's arms were a prison, and as his body shuddered against her she clawed at his shoulders, clenched her fists and pushed against him in frantic efforts at escape. As his hold loosened she tore his hands from her and her body, that had been pliant and welcoming moments ago, writhed in a frenzy of rejection.
As he lifted himself away the tears ran on to her pillow, and her voice was saying, 'No—no, no, no ‑' as though she couldn't stop.
'What is it?' he demanded roughly. He took her shoulders in his hands, trying to see her face. 'Did I hurt you --? The baby?'
She shook her head, tried to pull away from him. 'No—don't touch me!' Her hands beat frantically at his arms and face, her breath coming out in sobbing gasps of fear and hysteria. And Shard lifted one hand and slapped her.
Her breath stopped and she went rigid. Then Shard's arms were about her, her tear-washed face against his bare shoulder, and his voice was raggedly against her hair, 'Oh, God! My darling, don't—please don't cry. I didn't want to hurt you—it's like tearing out my own heart --'
She couldn't speak, but she moved her cheek against his palm and felt his hand grip her shoulder as his lips touched her temple.
The tears gradually lessened, and she lay tiredly against him, her eyes closed. Shard eased her on to the pillow and left her, returning with a cloth wrung out in lukewarm water, and he sponged her face and body gently while she lay there, then eased her nightgown on and pulled up the covers. She felt his lips on her temple before she went to sleep.
She opened her eyes to dimmed sunshine and found fingers of cold toast and a cup of lukewarm tea on her bedside table. The place was quiet, and she felt a quick throb of disappointment. Shard must have left about half an hour ago, hoping she would wake in time to drink the tea before it cooled.
She tasted it and made a wry face, laughed a little for no reason at all, and stretched like a contented cat, full of well-being.
She ate some of the toast before getting up and taking a long warm shower and changing into slacks and a loose top. The slacks zipped up, but she couldn't fasten the button on the waistband. She smiled and patted her waist, then picked up the tray by the bed to take it to the kitchen.
She worked for a while on the sketches for her book, the little boy and his father now coming more easily than they had for weeks. The boy was a strong, wiry little boy with black curls and a serious expression, but she drew him laughing now, with his head back and his hands spread joyously, his feet planted apart on the rubble of a building site. And she drew the father with a smiling tenderness in his face as he looked at the boy.
For minutes at a time she was absorbed in her work, but as the morning wore on she found herself listening for the sound of the telephone. Tiny doubts began to infiltrate into the happy confidence with which she had woken.
Why had Shard gone without waking her? Was it consideration, or had he preferred not to face her in the light of day? He had made love to her, but he had made it some form of vengeance, and she had imagined it all wiped out by one endearment, a few words of remorse uttered in a moment of stress, and an act of kindness.
Was that enough to change everything? Perhaps Shard already regretted the momentary softening, and would return to her as cold and as cruelly distant as before.
She closed her eyes and her fingers tightened on the pencil in her hand, snapping the lead. It didn't bear thinking of.
She opened her eyes and saw the breaking of the pencil had scored a tiny black gash across the face of the man she was drawing, and her fingers shook as she carefully erased it.
If she could speak to him, his voice might tell her...
She went to the phone and dialled the office, but his secretary said he was out and not expected back for some time.
'Do you know where he is?' Elise asked, her hand gripping the receiver in a dampened palm.
'He's meeting with a representative of Dunfield's and a bank manager, Mrs Cortland. I don't think he'd like to be disturbed, but if it's urgent I can try to reach him with a message --?'
'No—no, thank you,' said Elise. 'It isn't urgent.' I just wanted to hear his voice...
'Would you like to leave a message for when he comes back, then?'
'No,' she said. 'No message.'
She went back to her table and spread out the drawings she had done, but the urge to add to them had dissipated. Leaving them, she wandered restlessly about, then came to a sudden decision, scooped the keys of her car off their hook, grabbed her purse and left. The car was another thing that might have to go, she supposed. It wasn't yet clear to her just how bad Shard's financial situation was.
She drove to the section, parking the car on the grass where the house had been going to stand, and sat looking out over the harbour. A rata was just coming into red bloom near the cliff's edge, and two fantails hopped about in its branches, restlessly perching and fluttering. She got out and approached softly for a closer look, but when she got near they flew off in a whirr of green-grey feathers.
She stood at the edge of the slope, and watched the cream-edged waves tentatively lapping at the strip of white sand below. And for the first time she noticed that someone had cut rough fo
otholds into the face of the cliff, and in one place the protruding roots of the tenacious trees that clung to it made a series of natural steps.
The cliff was not very high or very steep, and the tiny bay looked very inviting. There were plenty of handholds among the trees and bushes that grew down the face. There was not much difficulty and very little danger in climbing down to the bottom.
She took it slowly and only became a little careless at the end, within a few feet of the sand. Her foot slipped a little and hooked under a curved root as she turned to make the last step, and as she leaped it caught and twisted with a jarring, wrenching pain in her ankle before her weight freed it.
She landed softly on the sand, unhurt otherwise, but very frightened for a few minutes while she lay there with her hand pressed to her stomach and her heart thumping.
She moved her foot, and her ankle throbbed painfully. She tried to rub it and winced, attempted to stand and thought better of it. The pain was too much.
After a while she half-crawled to the water's edge and lowered her throbbing limb into the blessed coolness. It was soothing, but when she tried her weight again the ankle was just as sore.
At one end of the little strip of sand the water reached a tumble of rocks, and she knew she could not negotiate them. At the other end there were overhanging trees, and when she dragged herself along to peer through the leaves she could see that further along the sand disappeared and the water washed against a sheer cliff. So there was no escape that way.
Perhaps if she rested for a while the ankle would heal itself at least sufficiently to allow her to climb back up the cliff. There was really no cause for alarm, the high water mark was some feet short of the cliff face, and the day was warm and pleasant.
And long ...
After several rests, and several cooling, comforting dips, the ankle looked swollen and was more painful than ever, and the easily-climbed, not very high cliff might have been Everest.
It was a ridiculous situation to be in, but Elise was stuck until someone came and found her. Which couldn't be long, she reassured herself. At the worst, she might find herself spending the night here, since she had told no one where she was going, intending to be back well before Shard arrived home. But it wouldn't be very long before he realised something had gone wrong, and this was a logical place to search for her. Her car still sat at the top of the cliff and once that was seen it would be only minutes before she was rescued.
