'It was the lamb's fault…' She wanted desperately to explain, but her head was spinning, her words jumbled and confused.
'Pete's dead, try to forget him,' Rolf ordered brusquely, obviously too angry to feign politeness.
Giving herself up to the exquisite agony of being held close against his heart, she tightened her arm around his neck and laid her head in the hollow of his shoulder, burrowing deeply so that she could sniff the clean, sea-tanged smell of him, could dare to ruffle her fingers ever so lightly through dark hair springing strongly above the nape of his neck.
Vaguely she wondered why his face was so white and haggard, why his lips were set in the line of a tightly-closed trap, why his bleak eyes stared straight ahead as if there was some goal he could not wait to reach.
When the cottage loomed he kicked open the door and stalked inside to lay her down upon the settle with a haste that made evident his wish to be rid of her.
'Take off those flimsy clothes,' he snapped, striding towards her bedroom, 'I'll search out something warmer.'
'I… can't,' she choked, feeling the pain of her hands and feet escalating in the warmth of the kitchen.
'Why not?' He turned, seeming ready to argue, then expelled a hissing breath when he caught sight of her lacerated feet. 'Mon dieu,' he whitened, 'what you lack in common sense you make up for in courage, mon enfant!'
She felt, in her warm, dreamy state, that at last they were beginning to reach a better understanding as, with a tenderness that was an unbelievable contrast to his earlier manner, he set about bathing her hands and feet, cleaning the cuts with a touch like velvet before patting them dry and applying clean dressings. She did not feel in the least embarrassed when he undressed her, rubbed warmth into her limbs, then helped her into a thick, old-fashioned nightdress, showing such impersonal coolness she felt piqued.
Yet when he carried her to her bed and tucked the covers beneath her chin she felt able to express her gratitude with a shy smile.
'Thank you,' she husked, 'for all your kindness.'
Solemnly he stared down at her appealing face, so pale it looked lost among the cloud of hair spread out across her pillow.
'My aim was always to be kind, ma chérie,' his words had a ragged, tortured quality, 'but I've never quite managed it, have I? Will it help you to sleep better if I assure you that you never need fear me again, that you need never again risk your life to avoid the consequences of my foul temper? I intend giving you your freedom, Claire.' A muscle jerked violently in his cheek. 'Tomorrow I'm taking you home—afterwards, if you wish it, you need never set eyes on me again.'
CHAPTER FOURTEEN
Pain kept her awake all night, the pain of a heart in torment, a mind numbed with despair. Incredibly, she and Rolf had achieved so many misunderstandings they had become strangers, strangers in love, two people who, each time they attempted to communicate, found themselves on different wavelengths.
She tossed feverishly, knowing that mere yards away Rolf would be stretched out in his sleeping bag staring at the rafters, plagued by a conviction that when she left the cottage she had run straight to Jonathan and, worst of all, that her fear of him had caused her to risk her life rather than face his anger. Dry sobs choked her throat; tears might have brought relief, but she was a well run dry—she, Claire Foxdale, who rarely showed her feelings, who had never been known to lose her temper, had, since becoming the wife of Rolf Ramsey, endured the extremes of every known emotion. He had been her creator, he had jerked her into pulsating life, taunted her into shows of temper, tears, misery and passion, yet now when she was fully alive and in need of him he was about to desert her! He had no right! she agonised resentfully, no right to kindle a fire and then leave it to dwindle into ashes! Her life depended upon his support, without him she might as well creep into the nearest grave…
She rose early, but even though the pain in her hands was minimal it took longer than she expected to fumble her way into a sleeveless top and a favourite pair of denims. It became evident immediately she stepped out of her bedroom that Rolf had been up since dawn. She saw his rolled-up sleeping bag and various other possessions set in a corner waiting to be stacked in the boot of the car. The fireplace had been swept clean, the slouree left dangling, the kettle whose singing had become a comfort was standing cold and empty on the hearthstone.
At the sound of his footsteps approaching the cottage Claire turned to the door to greet him, but her heart leapt, blocking her throat, when she saw him looking heartbreakingly handsome yet totally unfamiliar in a formal suit, pristine shirt, and an impeccably knotted tie.
His eyebrows rose, mutely questioning her casual outfit, yet his criticism was mild. 'Aren't you rather informally dressed for resuming your place in society?'
Stricken by his wry half-smile, she choked: 'I don't want to go—not yet!'
A shadow chased across his features; a lamp might have been turned off behind his eyes, leaving them blank pools of darkness. 'When surgery becomes necessary the cut should be swift,' he replied tightly. 'That way, the pain is less prolonged.'
Less prolonged, she thought wildly, when every minute we're apart promises to be agony?
Forcing herself to remain cool, she began fighting for her happiness and her sanity. Somehow she had to play for time, for just a few more hours during which she might be able to seize an opportunity to talk calmly and sensibly until all misunderstandings were dispelled. But Rolf must not be allowed to guess that he was being manoeuvred; success depended upon the time, the place, and his mood being just right.
'I enjoyed our sail so much,' she coaxed, grey eyes pleading, 'that I hoped we might make one last trip to the island. It needn't take long,' she forestalled his fierce objection, 'just a couple of hours, and afterwards,' she shrugged, 'well then, we'll go.'
Her shrug, her casual acceptance of their separation seemed to touch him on the raw. Controlling a wince that made her want to run into his arms to kiss his pain away, he acceded reluctantly to what he imagined was her last request. 'Very well, if you insist.' He cast a rueful glance at his suit. 'I suppose I'd better go and change.'
After a quick breakfast of slightly stale bread and fresh milk which to Claire tasted better than honey and nectar, they set off towards the shore. Before leaving the cottage Rolf had insisted upon examining her feet and changing the dressings but, solicitous though he was, he had had to agree that in the cold light of day the cuts were superficial and that with the aid of his ministrations they were healing up nicely.
Nevertheless, when they had walked a couple of hundred yards she decided she might chance a hobble, nothing theatrical enough to make him cancel their outing, just a barely perceptible limp to arouse his concern.
As she had calculated, he noticed immediately and without uttering a word he swung her into his arms, which was exactly where she had intended to be.
'Rolf,' she murmured, daring to brush her lips close to his cheek, 'can we stop on the cliff top? I want to show you how Polly managed to get stuck halfway down the chasm.'
He jerked to a halt, his face grim. 'Polly…?' he clamped. He seemed to be having trouble with his breathing, but as he had carried her so effortlessly the night before she suppressed a smile, knowing that his sharp intakes of breath and her own featherweight were not connected.
'Pete's sister,' she explained gently. 'She was stranded on the ledge, but when I went down to help her the exasperating little animal made her exit through a gap just wide enough for her to squeeze through.'
'So you didn't…' he hesitated, his eyes narrowed upon the horizon.
'No, I did not deliberately jump into the chasm,' she spelled out carefully as she twisted a strand of his hair around her finger, thinking how darkly it contrasted against her fair skin—black as temper, strong and silky as his sun-kissed body.
'So I was wrong on that count,' Rolf conceded tersely, as if reluctant to absolve himself of blame. 'I'm glad.'
Wisely she allowed the subject to drop and c
oncentrated upon the delight of being carried in his arms towards a sea sparkling with sunlight, capped with wavelets formed by a breeze that promised pleasure and excitement as they dared the stretch of water between island and mainland. One small hurdle had been safely jumped. Claire prayed her luck would hold out long enough to enable her to finish the course.
The sail was everything she had anticipated— breezy, exhilarating, demanding lots of co-operative action. During a moment of sheer enjoyment she loosened the pins in her hair and posed like a figurehead on the prow of a Viking longboat, enjoying the whip of the wind tossing and tousling fine strands into tangled golden floss. Unexpectedly she twirled a laughing face towards Rolf as they neared the island and was shocked to see his bleak expression, his rocky, outthrust jaw.
Making an effort to be pleasant, he forced a smile that progressed no further than an upward curling of his lip. 'I've never seen you looking happier,' he admitted stonily. 'If nothing else, your revived spirits prove that it was wrong of me to take you captive. I forced you to wear the chain of bondage,' he confessed bitterly, 'now justice has decreed that I should take my turn.'
She who is conceived in a cage yearns for a cage! Claire bit back the impulsive words from her lips. The time and the place were right, but Rolf's mood was far from perfect.
This time, when they landed, he held her only long enough to carry her ashore then, conveniently overlooking the injuries to her feet, he strode on ahead, his giant steps giving an impression of being eager for exercise. She strolled in his wake, respecting his need for solitude, feeling slightly ashamed of the way she was deliberately playing upon his susceptibilities. But the method she was using had been forced upon her, his emotions were so tightly clamped they had to be undermined even if the eventual reckoning should prove dangerous. His tensions could explode into a blast of either wrath or passion—either way, she had to know whether the basic emotion he felt for her was love or contempt.
She found him stretched flat on the sandy beach of the cove where they had swum on their last visit— was it really less than a week ago? He had stripped off his shirt and was lying face downward, his head supported on a forearm. He did not look up when she approached, but she could tell by muscles tensing beneath coffee-brown skin stretched silken taut across powerful shoulders that he was aware of her.
She sighed and slid down beside him, knowing it was time to re-commence her campaign. Scooping up a handful of sand, she let it trickle through her fingers into the hollow between his shoulder blades.
'I met your mother yesterday,' she told him, carefully casual. 'She's nice, I'd like to know her better.'
Rolf rolled over on to his back, staring his surprise. 'Maman? How could you—she's still in Montreal!'
She shook her head. 'Our conversation was short,' she resumed solemnly, 'but I gathered that she was rather annoyed with you for refusing to postpone our wedding until she was able to arrange a flight from Canada. As it happened, she was offered a last-minute cancellation on a plane that arrived here on the day of our wedding. You can imagine how disappointed she was when she arrived at my father's house and discovered that she had missed us by just a couple of hours.'
As she talked Rolf had grown very still, and when he shot a question she sensed that his main object of interest was not his mother. 'You were absent from the cottage for only a few hours, yet you had time to meet and converse with my mother?'
'I went straight home and then straight back again,' she affirmed quietly.
'So you didn't…'
'… see Jonathan? No,' she assured him, her grey eyes steady, 'nor do I ever wish to see him again.'
She dropped her eyes, watching tiny particles of sand, agitated as her heartbeats, being tossed and teased by a playful breeze. Rolf's eyes were boring into her face, yet she dared not look up in case his expression should be projecting a message she did not want to read. Was her persistence becoming an embarrassment to him? Was it possible—her heart skipped a beat—that already her attraction had begun to wane and that he was seizing upon their clashes of temperament as a heaven-sent excuse to be rid of her?
But bitter self-condemnation ran heavily through his words when finally he grated, 'So I was wrong about the cause of your accident, and wrong again when I accused you of seeking out Heywood. You needn't continue pointing out what a swine I've been—I think I've got the message. Nevertheless, I refuse to apologise for what happened to your pet lamb—animals are fortunate,' he jerked, 'for them relief from pain is swift, but humans are forced to suffer interminably.'
He sprang to his feet, aggravated as a bear prodded by thorns. 'I'm going for a swim,' he growled, his anger seeming directed towards himself. 'After all that, I need not wait to hear you correct my one other fallacy—the idiotic notion that, in spite of your resistance, you might learn to hate me a little less!'
Left once more alone, Claire sank back on to the sand, a crumpled heap of dejection. However hard she tried she found it impossible to penetrate the prickly barrier Rolf had erected around himself. She was naive, full of shy reserve, yet surely, if he had wanted to, he could have read encouragement in her tentative approaches. But perhaps—hope fluttered light as a butterfly's wings—her advances had not been explicit enough for a man grown used to rebuff, a man blinded by pride and plagued with guilty conscience. The solution seemed clear—she must intensify her campaign of seduction, do everything she could to prove to him that she loved him, short of actually spelling it out. To put her feelings into words was beyond her, for if her confession should leave him unmoved, worse still, embarrassed, then she would want to curl up and die!
She had had the foresight to bring a swimsuit, but as she fumbled her way into it she could not help but envy Rolf's lack of inhibitions, his insistence upon always swimming nude, and wishing she was bold enough to follow his example. Before her small store of courage could desert her, she ran down the beach and into the sea to swim towards the dark head bobbing above the water. But when he saw her coming he waved a warning and with powerful strokes began racing to meet her.
She was out of her depth, treading water, when his head surfaced and her eyes met his across a gulf of dividing sea.
'Farther out there's a strong undertow,' he clamped. 'Stay where the water is calm and there are no strong currents to harm you.'
'You could be warning me to stay out of your life,' she gasped, feeling the sea growing cold around her.
'Do you need to be warned?' She shivered, hating the remote quality of his tone. 'Does a slave hesitate to escape from a tyrant?'
She flicked a nervous tongue around spray-splashed lips and found the taste of sea-salt bitter. 'You're too self-critical, Rolf. People,' she hesitated, then forced herself to go on, 'people can sometimes be loved because of their faults, not merely in spite of them.'
'Love is a winged Cupid painted blind, eh, chérie?' He tossed back his head as if to laugh, then changed his mind. Swimming until he was within arm's reach of her, he pinched her chin between his thumb and forefinger to study her face with a solemnity that almost broke her heart. 'Let me look at you, mon ange, really look at you, for one last time, though there is little chance that I shall be allowed to forget what I have lost, be-cause every grey sea will bring a reminder of your troubled eyes; on each sunlit day I'll recall the sight of your glorious hair being tossed by a playful breeze; on the face of every chastised child I'll see your drooping mouth and lashes heavy with tears. Console yourself with the thought that long after suffering has faded from your mind I shall still be doing penance, for once I considered love to be nothing more than sexual desire, but I now know that it's the only means of escape from the loneliness that plagues man throughout most of his existence!'
A second later he was gone, his image blurred by a mixture of stinging spray and slowly-welling tears.
With a heart dragging heavy as her feet, Claire heaved out of the water and toiled towards the shore. His goodbye had sounded so final it had left little room for hop
e. Yet somewhere deep inside her was stirring an emotion her Viking ancestors would have recognised, an urge to fight, a stubborn refusal to admit defeat. Last night, stranded halfway down a chasm, she had prayed for one last chance to tell him she loved him—that chance would not have been given had Fate meant her to lose!
Damp seeping in patches through dark blue denims was evidence that Rolf had pulled them on without bothering to dry his dripping limbs. His tanned, sea-flecked body, spreadeagled beneath the sun, remained immobile when Claire dropped to her knees a few yards distant. His hands were shading his eyes, but she could see stern lines compressing his mouth and a hatchet-sharp jawline.
'Rolf…' she gulped, then hesitated.
'Get dressed, Claire.' Her heartbeats faltered at the weariness of his tone. 'It's time I was taking you home.'
A tight knot of repression burst inside her.
'No…!' Casting dignity to the winds, she scrabbled on her knees towards him and flung her trembling, soaking body on top of his. 'I love you, Rolf,' she babbled wildly, staring a plea for kindness into his black, incredulous eyes. 'I love you… I love you… I love you…' Once she had said it she did not seem able to stop.
Muttering a hoarse imprecation, he rolled over to clasp her in a bear hug, silencing her with a hungry, draining kiss.
Revelling in the weight of his body crushing her, boneless, into the sand, Claire responded with a sensuality that amazed him, straining close, pressing urgent, bewitching kisses against every rapidly throbbing pulse, offering herself without reservation and thrilling with fascinated terror to the discovery that despite her puny strength she possessed the power to reduce a proud, arrogant male to the level of a trembling, pleading slave.
Marriage by Capture Page 14
