‘My God,’ he said, bending over her, his eyes haggard in his anxious face.
She didn’t like to see him looking so worried for nothing. She wanted to tell him that she was all right, but the fall had winded her and although her lips moved no sound came. So she tried to get up. If she couldn’t tell him she could show him that no harm had been done. But his hands moved forward to restrain her, supporting and imprisoning her at the same time.
‘No,’ he instructed. ‘Don’t move. I want to find out if anything is broken first.’
He unzipped the red housecoat, flung it open and pushed it out of the way. By this time she had got her voice back, and, conscious of the scantiness of her underwear, she started to demur. Her protests were ignored. With a surprisingly gentle touch his fingers ran down her legs, along her collarbone, flattening against her stomach. He eased her arms out of the sleeves of the housecoat and examined each one carefully. There was something expert and clinical in the procedure, but she still found it embarrassing.
‘You’re very proficient,’ she said gruffly. ‘Have you had medical training?’
‘Just basic first aid. No bones broken, anyway. That’s a blessing, at least.’ But instead of looking relieved he looked frighteningly grim.
At any moment she expected to be told off for her carelessness and said, ‘Please, sir, can I get up now, sir?’ in mimicry of a small girl in terror of a disapproving adult.
‘I’ll carry you.’
‘But that’s not nec—’
Necessary or not, the red housecoat was slung round her shoulders and she was gently lifted into his arms.
In truth, she didn’t feel as good as she was trying to make out. She was shaking so much that she couldn’t keep still and she was perilously close to tears. It must be the aftereffects of the fall. It couldn’t be because she had enjoyed feeling his probing fingers tracing over her body, light yet purposeful, or because he was holding her so close to his chest, as tenderly as if she were a piece of precious china, or because his voice was so kind.
More used to his contempt and disdain, she had no weapons against this new concern and consideration.
He carried her through to the main room, hovering with her still in his arms above the long sofa, showing no apparent hurry to put her down. ‘I’m sorry,’ he said, looking into her perplexed eyes.
What was he apologizing for? ‘What for?’
‘For my unbelievable stupidity. I didn’t think. I can’t imagine what I used for brains. Bringing you to this remote place is the height of irresponsibility. I’ve cut you off from the world, which was my intention, but I’ve also cut you off from medical care, should you need it.’
‘It’s all right. I’m all right. I don’t need it.’
‘Just be right. I hope that fall doesn’t have unfortunate consequences. That would certainly be bitter irony.’
‘What would? What do you mean?’
He didn’t reply and she looked into his eyes as if she would find there the answer his lips denied. Black-olive eyes, their expression severely guarded, set in a face held rigid in concern. A carved mask, yet with a very human muscle working in his cheek.
Other emotions began to creep in, as she had known they would. Although his behavior had been circumspect as he examined her, for a revealing moment, just before he’d tucked the housecoat round her shoulders, his eyes had been riveted on her body. She would need to be blind not to see the admiration and desire in their dark depths.
His eyes slid down her body now and she didn’t need extrasensory perception to know that he was mentally stripping her of the housecoat and seeing her as he had a moment ago, the beige silk cupping her breasts, half revealing them, the daintiness of her one remaining garment emphasizing the pale smoothness of her legs. She could still feel the cherishing lightness of his fingers curving to the vulnerable hollows in her collarbone, the pressure of his hand against her tautened stomach muscles.
She knew with absolute certainty that if she hadn’t been protected by Glenda’s name, if he’d believed she was herself, Gemma Coleridge, he wouldn’t have been looking at her with torture in his eyes. They would have been dark, not with the pain of deprivation, but with passion. At this very moment his lips would have been bending to hers. Tantalized out of her mind by her own thoughts, her mouth softened into a kissing shape. It glistened, full and sensuous and tempting, though, had she been challenged, she would have severely denied issuing any provocative invitation. She would have been indignant if someone had suggested that, deep down, she didn’t count it a blessing that she hadn’t been able to convince him of her true identity. Because if he hadn’t been bound by loyalty to the brother who hovered between life and death, instead of putting her down on the sofa he would have turned round, still bearing her in his arms, retraced his steps and carried her upstairs.
He settled her on the cushions, plumping them up to give maximum comfort. When she would have put her feet to the floor he uttered a sharp and remonstrative ‘No!’ and ordered her to lie back and rest.
Never had she felt less like resting. How could her body be cool and self-possessed while she was inwardly on fire and seemingly dispossessed of coherent and sensible thought? Such wild imaginings were totally out of character.
‘Aren’t you being oversolicitous?’ she challenged, annoyed with him for making her feel this way. ‘I had a minor fall, nothing to make a big song and dance about.’
‘That minor fall could have had—could still haves—major repercussions, as you well know,’ he said, his anger well in evidence. He didn’t seem to be as icily calm as usual, but in the circumstances, that conclusion was far from comforting. ‘That stupid housecoat is to blame,’ he said.
If you want to put the blame where it rightly belongs, she thought, it was you. I could tell that someone was lurking down there in the hall—you, as it turned out—and it unnerved me. That’s why I missed my footing and fell. However, seeing this as fodder for further argument she kept her supposition to herself. She was disinclined to go on because, despite her protests, she was feeling decidedly weak. She thought she might have bumped her head because it was beginning to ache. At the same time she couldn’t let the accusation go unchallenged. ‘Fiona’s stupid housecoat,’ she corrected.
‘I thought you were going to take it up.’
‘I took the other things up, but this defeated me. As the zip comes right down to the hem it wasn’t a simple turning-up job. I would have had to take the zip out and sew it in again.’
‘Are you easily defeated or not a needlewoman?’
‘Neither. It does belong to someone else, you know. The skirt and the jeans have seen quite a bit of wear and I took it that Fiona wouldn’t mind donating them to a good cause. And if she did I could always take them down again.’ She had made a mistake, she realized. Her reference to Fiona had been every bit as incendiary as the other remark would have been and she was bang in the middle of the kind of argument she had wanted to avoid. ‘On the other hand, the housecoat is comparatively new and very smart. Besides being such a complex job, requiring a lot of unpicking, it couldn’t be easily altered back again to fit Fiona. Satisfied?’
‘It would have been a lot less complicated if you’d been taller.’
‘I apologize. It was very stupid of me to inherit the genes that govern height—or, in my case, the lack of it—from my mother, who was also unfortunate enough to be on the petite side.’
‘And whose temper have you inherited? Cool it, or you’ll blow a fuse.’
Was there any wonder? She felt that she had been judged, most unfavorably, against Fiona, who not only measured up to the elegant length of the housecoat but was presumably an excellent needlewoman into the bargain. Resentment for the unknown girl rose in her, followed by shame that she could be so petty minded.
‘I don’t care if Fiona is so tall that you have to stand on a stool to kiss her. And I don’t care if she’s the best needlewoman in the world. I don’t care, do you hear?
’
‘As you’re shouting fit to blast my eardrums, yes, I hear,’ he said in a contrastingly quiet voice. ‘Just as a matter of interest, if I had to stand on a stool to kiss a woman I shouldn’t want to. Any woman that tall would be a freak’
‘It might be of interest to you. It’s of no interest to me whom you want to kiss.’
Did his eyes contest that? He merely said, ‘I’ll see how the food’s going.’
‘I’ll help you.’
‘You stay here.’
Sinking back against the cushions she decided that that was one order she was willing to obey. If only she didn’t feel so groggy perhaps she’d be able to cope better. Why did normal conversations always seem to develop into passionate scenes between them? Why was everything such a big issue? Or did it all boil down to one issue? Passion that couldn’t be vented one way found other outlets.
Why was he standing there looking at her? He had said he was going to see to the food. Why didn’t he go and leave her in peace?
Peace? She’d had none since she met him and she doubted that she would ever find it again. And it was all his fault He was a man of deep emotions; there were no half measures for him. He would love passionately and he would hate passionately. Right at the beginning, when he first brought her here, she had viewed her position with a certain amount of apprehension. He had kissed her and her world had turned upside down, and she was still apprehensive. The threat was still there, a different kind of threat that brought a similar reaction, but with a subtle difference.
Before, the fear had been in her heart. Now, as she met the flicker of hungry sensuality in his hard eyes, eyes deliberately hardened against her, the fear was for her heart.
The meal he had prepared was simple but delicious. It was the presentation she had difficulty in digesting. He wouldn’t let her come to the table, insisting that she keep her feet up, so he set two trays, sitting opposite in a chair he’d pulled nearer. He must have noticed that she was screwing up her eyes because when she put her hand to the pulse beating in her temple he was quick to say, ‘Headache?’
‘A little one.’ It was now so fierce that it was tearing her apart.
‘Light bothering you?’
‘No.’
Disregarding the lie he set his tray down and crossed the room to flick two switches. One extinguished the bright overhead light, plunging the room into momentary darkness. The other bathed the room in a soft glow cast by three strategically placed lamps.
‘Better?’
‘Yes.’
Before he sat down he said, ‘Do you like music? The soft soothing-away-headaches kind, I mean.’
‘Y-yes.’
She hoped the gentle background music would ease the snapping tension between them, a tension which she imaginatively likened to the crackle of static electricity.
But when he put on a romantic Chopin record and inquired ‘Good?’ she was too aware of the mocking smile on his lips to permit the relaxing strains entry into her brain. Her brain was too busy screaming out its suspicions. Good food, a tastefully laid tray, soft lights, relaxing music. All the trappings of a seduction.
She knew that her thoughts were being disobedient again, leading down avenues where no prudent girl would venture. This was because she also knew that brotherly loyalty only went so far, and she couldn’t forget the look in his eyes earlier, a look she had seen frequent recurrences of since, a look which over-stepped all bounds. His manner toward her wasn’t tender, but it was definitely solicitous. That, plus all this, reared an alarming question in her mind. What was it leading up to?
She didn’t realize how jumpy she was until he spoke and the unexpectedness of it, because he had seemed to be totally absorbed in the music, startled her so much that her tray began to slide. Her bid to hold onto her plate was successful, but her knife and fork got away and went spinning across the carpet.
Maxwell retrieved them, saying, ‘I’ll fetch clean ones.’
‘Please don’t. I’d finished anyway.’
‘Lost your appetite?’ he taunted, resuming his seat ‘You’re a strange girl. I never know what’s going on in your mind.’
It’s because I know what’s going on in your mind that I behave so strangely, she thought, then said sweetly, ‘What were you saying?’
‘About not knowing what’s going on in your mind? Or about you being a strange girl?’
He knew very well what she meant. ‘No, before that.’
‘You mean what I said that startled you so much that you almost dropped your tray? I said that when Angus brings the boat tomorrow we’ll go back to the mainland with him.’ He’d abandoned his own tray to pick up her knife and fork. He seemed in no hurry to return to it. Instead he rested his elbows on the arms of his chair, making a steeple of his fingers upon which to prop his granite chin. ‘Your fall just now brought it home to me. This place is too remote. The risks in keeping you here are too great—so it’s back to civilization. That’s just the opposite of what you expected me to say, isn’t it?’
‘How could it be? I had no expectations one way or the other.’
‘I don’t believe you.’
‘That makes a change!’
Ignoring the sarcasm in her voice he said, ‘You thought I wanted to go to bed with you.’
‘I thought no such thing,’ she said, hastily dropping her eyes.
‘That is the most provocative, sensual thing I’ve ever seen.’
‘What is?’
‘The way you hide behind those fantastically long lashes. It’s a good trick, but it won’t do you any good.’ Without giving her time to protest that it wasn’t a trick he continued in that same sneering tone. ‘Desirable as you are you don’t need to lock your bedroom door against me tonight, or any night for that matter. You’re the kind of poison, a poison for which there is no antidote, I can do without.’
7
Next morning, even before she opened her eyes, she sensed that something was different. There was a brightness on her eyelids which hadn’t been there before. She raised them and the glare made her blink. She shot out of bed and ran to the window. She had drawn back the curtains last night before getting into bed and now, looking out, she gasped in astonishment A blizzard of snowflakes was falling against the upper part of the window; the lower part was already blocked by the snow piled up on the ledge.
She opened the window, froze in the icy blast of air, pushed the packed snow away, and looked out on the fairytale scene before her. It was a strange white world, an unrecognizable landscape, every contour changed beyond belief by the high drifts of snow. Trees took on new dimensions. Those that weren’t buried under their unexpected winter coat were bowing under the weight of their burden. As she watched the pale sun came over the loch, frosting and sparkling every peak with a rainbow glitter of light. The beauty of it took her breath away. It was like a picture from a children’s story book that had suddenly come to life—any moment the Snow Queen would come sweeping by on her sleigh drawn by six daintily stepping reindeer.
It was easy to be fanciful when there was no pressing need to be practical. Back home she would have been despairing over how she could get to work, her mind full of visions of impassable roads. Possibly she would be switching on the radio for the latest bulletin, shivering at the horrendous reports of the inevitable spate of accidents, some fatal, listening to the accounts of abandoned cars causing further hazards to the intrepid motorist, telephone wires down, and communications systems out of action.
She wondered how Miss Davies was coping. Not just today, but every day, and whether a temporary agency had been asked to send someone to help with the work.
Closing the window with a sigh, she knew that her delight in the winter scene was self-defeating. It meant they wouldn’t be returning to the mainland today with Angus as Maxwell had said they would. Angus wouldn’t bring the boat across in this and they were trapped on the island until conditions improved.
Looking across the breakfast table a
little while later at Maxwell’s sullen face she realized he wasn’t used to having his plans thwarted. Having made up his mind on an immediate return to the mainland he was furious at nature’s intervention. If it hadn’t been to her own disadvantage to be trapped here she could almost have been glad that he wasn’t the power unto himself he thought he was and that something could get the better of him.
Despite his ill temper he cosseted her in cotton-wool for the next two days, sweeping aside her insistance that, apart from a bruised shoulder and the odd stiff joint, she hadn’t come to any real harm from her fall.
At first his solicitude was amusing, but after a while the constant watch for some seemingly anticipated deterioration in her health became downright irritating. Finally, feeling like a specimen under a microscope, she turned on him. ‘Lay off, will you? I’m not going to have delayed-action concussion or anything like that Stop watching me. It’s unnerving. Would you like it if you felt that someone was monitoring your every move?’
He grunted, conceding nothing. But after that his surveillance relaxed and so did she, now that she could move around with ease. The freedom of the house was hers. Maxwell gave her permission to wander at will, to dip into the library of books and the vast collection of tapes and records, built up over the years and guaranteed to provide something to suit every taste. He entreated her to use all the facilities available to make her enforced stay more pleasant. She curtailed herself and refrained from prying into drawers and cupboards for reasons prompted only by nosiness. During her explorations she discovered a trunk in one of the upper rooms that was a terrible temptation, especially for someone of Gemma’s vivid imagination. It was a very old-fashioned trunk, the kind that’s usually handed down from generation to generation, and was probably chock-full of fascinating things, but she left it unopened.
She took over the housekeeping and had no such compunction about delving into the built-in kitchen cupboards and pillaging the shelves. There was plenty of bread in the deep-freeze, but Morag’s cake and scones had all been eaten. She knew she could not hope to eclipse Morag, or even to equal her, but she could whip up a light sponge cake. Although she viewed the unfamiliar oven with trepidation, much to her delight the cake came out beautifully, golden brown and springy to the touch. She lifted it carefully from its tin and put it on a wire tray to cool. Later she would split it and fill it with jam from the supply on the pantry shelf.
Sweet Bondage Page 10
