by Penny Jordan
‘No? But you did shrink away from me,’ he told her softly. ‘Why, Lissa? Oh I know there’s always been a degree of antagonism between us, but you’re not naive, you know as well as I do that it’s an antagonism sparked by mutual desire.’ He looked grimly at her, and continued before she could speak. ‘Neither of us might be proud of desiring the other, but I know if we’re honest that neither of us could deny it.’
He caught the small sound she choked back and stared at her, watching the colour drain out of her face.
‘Lissa, for God’s sake.’ He sounded more angry than concerned and Lissa flinched back from him as he added, ‘Let’s stop the play-acting shall we? A physical relationship between us was part and parcel of the deal when you agreed to marry me. You knew that …’
‘Are you trying to tell me you married me solely because you wanted to go to bed with me?’ Lissa was proud of the cool way she threw the taunt at him.
‘Don’t be ridiculous. You know damn well I didn’t. After all why the hell should I go to such lengths to secure something other men—plenty of other men have had for …’ He caught her hand just before it connected with his jaw, gripping her wrist so tightly that it hurt. ‘Cut out the injured innocent bit, Lissa … it doesn’t suit you.’
She was practically trembling with rage and yes with pain too, hating him for what he was saying to her; for revealing to her how he really viewed her. It was intolerable, unbearable … and to think she had contemplated telling him the truth! She could not endure to stay here a moment longer … The girls … all the logical calm thinking she had done during the day were forgotten … Nothing was more important than escaping from Joel and the agony he was causing her.
‘Let me go.’ She rubbed her aching wrists, as he released her, scrambling off the chair and moving on shaking legs towards the door.
‘Lissa …’
‘Don’t touch me!’ Her throat was so tight with pain she could barely speak, her voice a husky whisper of torment. ‘Don’t come anywhere near me! I’m leaving, now … this minute. I …’ To her bitter humiliation tears clogged her throat, filling her eyes, and threatening to flood humiliatingly from her eyes. She felt so weak and alone … desperate for some haven in which to hide away from him, and yet knowing she had none.
‘Lissa!’ He ignored her demands, striding towards her, catching hold of her arm with strong fingers. Panic exploded through her in wave after wave of sheer terror. She was back at the party, fifteen again, only this time Joel wasn’t just looking at her, he was touching her, hurting her physically as well as mentally. She gave a thin, high scream of pain, grateful for the deep heavy black void that opened up to receive her and grant her oblivion.
LISSA OPENED HER EYES reluctantly and stared round the shadowed bedroom. Where was she? Suddenly she remembered and she shuddered. This was Joel’s room. No, their room, she corrected herself, bitterly. He must have brought her here after … after she’d fainted. She must get away … She must escape before he hurt her any more. She sat up groggily, swinging her feet to the floor.
‘Lissa!
The peremptory command in his voice as Joel walked into the room froze her. He was carrying a tray with a cup of tea on it.
‘Drink this.’ He put the cup down on the bedside table nearest to her, ‘And then you and I are going to talk.’ He looked so grimly angry that Lissa started to tremble; her teeth chattering together as wave after wave of fear shuddered through her. She heard Joel swear and saw him come towards her, holding out her hands to ward him off. And then suddenly and unnervingly she was crying … deep, wrenching sobs that hurt her chest and made her whole body shake.
‘ Shush … shush … it’s all right …’ Unbelievably being rocked in Joel’s arm, with the warm pressure of his body against her own, created inside her an intense sensation of security and comfort. She wanted to cling to him Lissa realised numbly, to burrow against him and let the soft words he was murmuring soothe and relax her. But it was Joel who had provoked the emotional storm now racking her; Joel with his cruel jibing tongue who was responsible for her pain. It was also Joel who was easing it, she acknowledged hazily, Joel was making her feel cherished and cared for.
By the time the tearing sobs were under control she had recovered enough to want to pull away from him, deeply embarrassed and confused by her own behaviour, but Joel wouldn’t let her, subsiding on to the side of the bed, and taking her with him, still holding her in his arms.
‘Now,’ he said quietly, ‘I want to know what all that was about.’
Lissa managed a tight smile. ‘Oh just another trick in my repertoire,’ she told him brittley. ‘Very effective isn’t it?’
For a long moment he simply looked at her, and then he said quietly, ‘Extremely effective; so much so that I find it impossible to believe it was fabricated. And so no doubt you are going to tell me, was your faint.’ He watched the colour run up under her skin and said sardonically, ‘Exactly.
‘I’ve seen fear before, Lissa, and I’ve seen panic, and I know when they’re genuine. What I don’t know is why I should invoke them so forcefully in you.’
Now there was no going back. She would have to tell him, Lissa knew, and coupled with apprehension and reluctance was also relief. She wanted to tell him; she wanted to be rid of the emotional burden she was carrying.
Lifting her head she answered simply, ‘Because you want us to be lovers,’ and was rewarded by a physical reaction every bit as violent in its own way as her own had been. Dark colour burned up under his skin, stretching it somehow until it was pulled sharply over his cheek bones. His eyes glittered darkly with a mixture of anger and something else she couldn’t put a name to, his fingers curling round her wrist as he said grimly, ‘You have a hell of a way of putting a man down, Lissa. I won’t ask what it is that bars me from joining the ranks of those fortunate enough to enjoy your favours—I dare not …’
‘No … no … you don’t understand,’ Lissa interrupted impetuously, determined now that she had committed herself to honesty to go through with it. ‘It isn’t you … at least, it is, but … Oh look, Joel, let me go right back to the beginning.’
He released her wrist, and watched grimly as she moved back from him, putting a distance between them.
‘I can’t let you be my lover … or indeed any man be my lover because … because I … find the thought of sex … What I’m trying to tell you is that I’m … I’m frigid,’ she said flatly at last. ‘I’ve never had sex with anyone, Joel,’ she told him forcing herself to look at him and forestalling what she knew he must be going to say by saying quickly, ‘Yes, I know you must find that hard to believe but it’s true. That night, that party, when I was fifteen … that was the first time …’ She swallowed, trying to concentrate on a piece of wallpaper safely taking her eyes away from Joel’s and allowing her to continue her story without having to look at him and see how he was reacting.
‘Nothing really happened … just a little very light petting …’
‘Your father told me you were wildly promiscuous,’ Joel broke in curtly. ‘Are you trying to tell me …’
‘My father and I didn’t get on … I was extremely rebellious … but never in that way. My parents disapproved of my crowd of friends. I’d been forbidden to go out that night … but I disobeyed them—for the first and last time,’ she added wryly. ‘My father was an extremely strict man. Amanda knew how to get round him, but I didn’t have the knack. You see,’ she said with painful honesty, ‘I was never what he wanted in a daughter, I wasn’t blonde and small and cuddly like my mother and Amanda and … Oh well, no doubt much of it was my fault, because I never tried to conform to what he wanted me to do … You see I wanted him … both of them to love me for what I was … not as another Amanda, but you know how teenagers are, I couldn’t articulate any of this to them. My father disapproved of teenagers anyway … Every time he read about teenage misdemeanours in the press he used to go on about it … I wasn’t promiscuous at all … I suspe
ct he confused you with what he no doubt described as my appalling behaviour; he did rather have a tendency for exaggeration. Of course the fact that I’d disobeyed him and then been found by him in the circumstances that I was … It was all quite innocent really, but he would never believe that …’
‘I had no idea.’ Joel was frowning now. ‘He’d described you to my parents as extremely rebellious and wild. When he asked me to come with him and fetch you back from that party, I naturally assumed …’
‘The worst!’ Lissa supplied briefly. ‘Yes … I can understand that.’
‘So, given, that at fifteen you were innocent of the crimes attributed to you, I don’t see …’ He frowned and then said slowly, ‘Lissa, are you trying to tell me that you’re still a virgin?’
‘I’m afraid so … Oh, not by choice,’ she assured him grimly. ‘Being virginal at fifteen is one thing, being in the same state at twenty-three is quite definitely another, but …’ She got up off the bed, and paced the floor tensely, now that she was faced with telling him, at a loss to know how to.
‘But what, Lissa?’ It was plain that Joel was completely bemused, ‘And don’t try telling me that it is through lack of opportunity.’
‘No, not that,’ Lissa agreed drily, ‘but because of what happened at that party I seem to have developed a mental block where sex is concerned. No matter how much I might think I want to make love when it comes to it I can’t, because all I see is …’
‘Your father’s angry, disapproving face,’ Joel guessed tersely, his mouth compressing grimly. ‘Yes, I can understand that.’
Just for one cowardly moment Lissa was tempted to agree and let matters go at that. Her heart was thumping crazily with a mixture of adrenalin and reaction. She wanted to take the way out Joel was unknowingly offering her, but something, some stubborn quirk of pride would not let her, and so instead she shook her head.
‘No?’ Joel frowned. ‘Then what? Tell me, Lissa? What?’ he demanded getting up and taking hold of her. ‘What?’ he repeated, watching as she touched her tongue to dry, stiff lips.
‘You,’ she choked out at last, refusing to look at him, her body tensing against his grip as she pulled instinctively away, fearing his reaction, dreading that if she did look at him she would see in his eyes the contempt that had haunted her dreams for so long. ‘I see you,’ she repeated instead in a low, tormented voice, ‘and you look at me with such contempt and dislike that I …’ She started to shake again, dimly aware of Joel cursing as he released her.
‘Me? Lissa, look at me!’ His hands gripping her face forced her to do as he wished. He was nearly as pale as she was herself but this was a different pallor, and Lissa shrank beneath the raw fury she could see glittering in his eyes until he said tersely, ‘No, Lissa … Don’t be frightened.’
‘I shouldn’t have told you.’ She was mortified now by what she had revealed to him, unable to fully comprehend the reasons for the emotional outburst which she knew had been the release valve, allowing her to tell him the truth.
‘But you have.’ He looked at her in silence for several seconds, and then said abruptly, ‘Is that why you agreed to marry me? As some sort of punishment … Or at least is that part of the reason?’
He was far too astute, Lissa thought hollowly. ‘Initially,’ she agreed, in an expressionless voice. She felt far too drained to endure any more emotions. ‘But only because you had made me so very angry. Once my anger had cooled I wanted to retract, but then there were the girls to consider … I thought it would pay you back, you see,’ she said simply, ‘but of course once my temper had gone I realised how stupid I was being … After all, it wasn’t even your fault that I …’
‘No … it wasn’t my fault at all,’ Joel agreed harshly. ‘No … I can’t be blamed for condemning you out of hand, can I, Lissa? After all, I wasn’t fifteen, was I? I was well into my twenties … and naturally it is perfectly understandable that I should have destroyed the fragile illusions of someone little more than a child … that I should have accepted someone else’s valuation of you without forming my own. No, of course I can’t be blamed. Like hell I can’t,’ he added bitterly, turning away from her. ‘Like hell.’
For a moment there was silence, while Lissa struggled to come to terms with Joel’s savage reaction to her disclosures. She had seen him exhibit tenderness and concern for his nieces; and she had known there was a gentler side to him, but she had never expected this devastating reaction to her revelations; this rage of anger directed against himself.
At last he said curtly, ‘And so what now? Do you want the marriage annulled? It could be.’
Did she? With a sudden, stifling leap of her heart Lissa knew she did not without quite knowing why. All she could manage to say was a rather unsteady, ‘Do you?’
‘What does that mean?’ Joel questioned. ‘That you wish to stay married to me perhaps, but in name only, because of the girls?’
Gratefully Lissa seized on the opening he had given her. ‘Yes …’ she agreed quickly. ‘Yes … I couldn’t bear to lose them now. I feel that they need both of us, Joel, just as you said but of course, now that you know that … that I … that … ’
‘That I can’t make love to you,’ he supplied harshly for her.
‘Yes … yes,’ Lissa agreed hurriedly, ‘If because of that you want to be free …’
She found during the silence that followed that she was holding her breath, hoping that he would not say that he wanted to end their marriage she acknowledged inwardly.
‘I owe you some recompense,’ he said at last, ‘and if marriage to me is what you want, Lissa … then that is what you shall have, but there is one thing I shall insist on.’ He looked at her and then said coolly, ‘We must continue to share this room. As much for the girls’ sake as anything else. They’ve already been through far too much. You of all people will know how sensitive and quick children can be. They’re used to their parents sleeping together and I believe that if we show any deviation from that pattern it could cause Louise more anxiety.’
Lissa nodded her head slowly. There was something in what Joel was saying, and what he asked was very little.
‘What?’ he queried when she assented. ‘No demand for my solemn promise that I won’t touch you?’
Lissa looked at him in surprise. ‘But why should you want to?’ she asked him, genuinely puzzled. ‘You can hardly want me now. You’re forgetting, Joel,’ she reminded him wryly, ‘I know exactly how off-putting men find my … my disability. I know you said you wanted me, but that was when you thought I was sexually experienced … able to respond to you …’
‘Yes, so it was,’ he agreed quietly, and just for a second something intangible, a fleeting expression in his eyes made a frisson of sensation run down her spine. Before she could analyse it, it was gone, and then Joel was saying curtly, ‘Lissa, tell me have you ever discussed any of this with anyone else …’
‘No.’ She looked at him in fresh surprise. ‘Somehow I’ve never been able to.’
‘I see.’ He wasn’t looking at her and Lissa was sure she must have imagined the tiny thread of satisfaction running through his voice because when he did look at her, his face was carefully devoid of all expression.
‘It’s been a long day,’ he said quietly. ‘I think we should both try to get some sleep.’ He picked up the now cold cup of tea he had made her earlier and said calmly, ‘I’ll go down and make us both a nightcap while you get ready for bed,’ and Lissa knew that he was telling her that he was giving her the privacy to get undressed and into bed without him being there. She was grateful to him for his understanding, she thought tiredly as she slid between cool sheets a little later, and yet as she closed her eyes and tried to court sleep, the memory uppermost in her mind was of the emotional and physical sensations she had experienced when Joel held her in his arms.
CHAPTER SIX
‘BUT YOU HAVEN’T KISSED Lissa “goodbye”.’
They were having breakfast in the kitchen, th
e scene a homely familiar one, Emma struggling with her cereal in her high chair while Louise sat between Joel and herself. Joel had an early meeting with one of his tenant farmers and he had already finished his breakfast. He had stood up to kiss Louise ‘goodbye’—a formality she insisted on every morning, and it was her shrill, piping complaint that drew Lissa’s attention away from Emma. Both of them were on their guard for any signs of insecurity from Louise, and over the top of her blonde head their eyes met in mutual concern. Since the night she had admitted the truth to him Lissa had found herself much more relaxed in Joel’s company; much more able to appreciate the side of him she had previously thought reserved only for others. He was a compassionate caring man, and a very strong one as well, she acknowledged. He had talked to her on several occasions about her past, drawing her out in a way that afterwards had the power to amaze her. She had found herself confiding things to him that she had never dreamed of telling anyone, but conversely the closer she felt drawn towards him the greater pains he seemed to take to preserve a distance between them. And somehow that hurt, even though it should not have done.
‘Kiss Mummy,’ Emma announced, spooning cereal liberally into and around her mouth. While Louise alternated in calling them Lissa and Joel and ‘Mummy’ and ‘Daddy’, Emma, too young to have any deeply lasting memory of her parents, had quickly transferred their titles to Lissa and Joel.
Both of them had agreed to let the girls call them whatever made them feel most comfortable, but it did something to her heart, Lissa admitted wryly, to hear Emma addressing her as ‘Mummy’. She loved both girls with a fiercely protective maternalism that still half surprised her. They had entirely different personalities; in Louise she detected certain of her own personality traits, together with, quite surprisingly, some of Joel’s, while Emma was completely Amanda’s daughter.
