Chains of Regret

by Margaret Pargeter

  ‘I’m sure you don’t want me that way,’ she answered flatly.

  His eyes narrowed, moving slowly over her, his mouth twisting. ‘How do you know how I want you?’

  Silently she shook her head, unable to face his grim speculation. ‘I’m tired, Stein,’ she sighed.

  ‘Exhausted from too much thinking, I would say,’ he judged with an accuracy she hated. ‘Perhaps you need a break, If only to do a little shopping.’

  ‘Shopping?’ She sat up, clutching the sheet which fell from her satin-strapped but otherwise bare shoulders.

  Some of the despondency faded from her eyes as she exclaimed eagerly, ‘You’ll take me to London?’

  ‘If you really need clothes.’

  ‘I do!’ She had to make him believe it. She didn’t want him to think she would bother with anything so trivial, at a time like this, unless it was necessary. ‘I didn’t take much to France, only enough to fill one suitcase, but I can’t find any of the things I left behind. They seem to have disappeared.’

  ‘I think your father threw most of them out,’ Stein shrugged. ‘Someone came collecting for a jumble sale and he thought it was better that some charity ‘had them, rather than the moths.’

  ‘He certainly made a good job of it,’ she muttered, with a little indignation.

  ‘He wanted your room decorated, for when you came back,’ Stein recalled. ‘He decided it would be easier if the wardrobes were empty, but he didn’t see to it personally, he asked me to do it for him.’

  Helen flushed at the thought of Stein’s hands on her most intimate possessions. She had bought quite a lot during the last few months before she had gone to France. Crazy scraps of satin and lace which she had worn under the skimpy dresses in which she had gone to her parties. It had been part of the subconscious defiance which had driven her continually to try and shock Stein. He had been more bored than shocked, she suspected, lowering her heavy lashes so he wouldn’t see her unhappy agitation.

  Making an effort to change the subject, she queried, ‘He had the whole house redecorated?’

  ‘It was necessary,’ Stein said shortly. ‘We began doing a lot of entertaining. Foreign visitors like our old English mansions, as long as they’re not too shabby.’

  ‘How did you manage without a hostess?’ Helen frowned. Her father had never been keen on having friends in, although he had frequently dined out. This new innovation must have been Stein’s idea. She wondered who had footed the bills.

  ‘We usually found someone willing to oblige,’ she heard Stein saying.

  ‘Such as Barbara?’

  ‘She did on one or two occasions,’ he admitted with a smile.

  Suddenly Helen didn’t want to talk about Barbara or any of the other women Stein knew and made use of.

  ‘If I sell Oakfield,’ she said sharply, ‘you’ll have to entertain in your flat.’

  ‘Sometimes I do,’ he replied, his eyes glinting.

  ‘About tomorrow,’ Helen said quickly, as she imagined the kind of entertainment that would be and her gibe appeared to leave him unmoved, ‘what time will you be leaving?’

  ‘About ten,’ he viewed her pink cheeks idly. ‘We don’t have to hurry.’

  She was disapprovingly silent for a moment. ‘What about the firm? Surely you have more to do since - since…’

  ‘Helen!’ he cut through her halting speech effectively, ‘1 wish you’d stop worrying! Nothing I say seems to make any difference, but the firm isn’t taking any harm, I assure you.’

  ‘If you say so.’ She raised wide, anxious eyes to his face.

  He stood up but to her dismay sat down again, this time much closer. Beneath his jacket his shoulders were wide and powerful, filling her vision so that she couldn’t see anything but him. Trembling slightly, she wondered if she could ask him to sit elsewhere.

  ‘Tomorrow,’ he said, looking about as open to suggestion as a leopard on the prowl, ‘I’m devoting to you.’

  ‘You don’t have to come shopping with me, though!’

  ‘Did you think I was going to let you roam around London on your own?’ he asked impatiently. ‘You’re headstrong and reckless and highly-strung. You haven’t had time to get over your father yet. What would happen if you fainted or were taken ill suddenly and I wasn’t there?’

  It was unlikely, Helen thought, but she couldn’t resist what she was too willing to construe as concern. If Stein was worried he must care for her a little. Unless - doubts rushed back- unless he intended making sure she didn’t meet another man? Someone she might impulsively develop a raging passion for, which would really upset his applecart!

  Helen swallowed. Could she afford to argue? There was a warning glint in his eyes and he had only to touch her for her whole body to burn. His temper was unpredictable. If she argued and he shook her she didn’t know how she might react. Between them there was some kind of fairly explosive chemistry and neither admitting nor hiding it would make it go away. Close at hand, the sheer sexual force of Stein was something she was all too aware of, and while she hated her own body for its blind response, she was finding it increasingly difficult to resist. She could only pray that given time she would learn how to cope with it.

  Their eyes met and the darkness of his had a curious effect on her. Her nerves began jumping violently while a fierce warmth began invading her body. She had to get rid of him, if she wasn’t to make a fool of herself!

  Nervously she managed to smile. ‘I’ll be ready at ten.’

  As if conscious of her nervousness and scornful of it, Stein swooped to drag her swiftly to him. When she tried to struggle, he muttered contemptuously against her trembling mouth, ‘Be still-I’m only taking a goodnight kiss, as you so obviously want rid of me.’

  If that were all! Helen’s senses screamed, as she tried to control that part of her outside her intelligence.

  How was it that her mind so quickly lost the battle when Stein attacked her physically? For the first time in her life she was experiencing male domination to which her body clamoured to surrender. Maybe Stein had always been a threat, but when he exerted pressure she found it shattering.

  His hands were in her hair, his painful grip preventing any movement, throwing her completely at his mercy, while the bruising insistence of his mouth forced her submission. And it wasn’t until he felt her response that he set her free. Only then did he thrust her from him, his eyes gleaming with a cool satisfaction when her arms lifted to creep around him.

  ‘Sleep well, Helen,’ he smiled cynically, ‘I’ll see you in the morning.’

  She was up early, as she scarcely slept at all. When she did it was only fitful dozing split by vivid dreams from which she awoke exhausted. By the time a winter’s dawn reluctantly entered her room she was pale-faced and heavy-eyed, her body still restless with a dissatisfaction she didn’t understand. Some time in the early morning she had given up trying to measure the extent of Stein’s hold over her. Her heart ached, whenever she thought of him, in a way she didn’t like.

  She suspected, if she allowed it, that she might soon be in love with him, and this she was desperate to avoid. It had to be easier when the house was sold and their meetings thereafter limited strictly to business, if at all.

  Pray God this happened very soon! Helen breathed feverishly as she half fell out of bed and stumbled to the bathroom to take a reviving cold shower.

  Stein didn’t join her until it was time to leave, but she could tell from his air of vital freshness that he hadn’t just got up. Obviously he had been out, riding her horses and sampling her pool! She greeted him distantly, her eyes cool.

  ‘Tried the pool yet?’ he asked, when they were on their way.

  ‘Er--what was that?’ Helen blinked at him, not having heard a word he said. She had been too busy studying the back of the chauffeur’s head as they purred smoothly towards London. This morning the car was a Mercedes, and she had a sudden desire to ask if it was one of a fleet, and who owned them. She dared not ask, much
as she would have liked to.

  She guessed from the sharp amusement in Stein’s eyes that he knew what she was thinking, and was waiting.

  Biting her lip hard, she prayed that her never-ending suspicions would leave her. The struggle with them against her desire to trust Stein was wearing her down.

  She realised she was making mental lists all the time of things which might prove his dishonesty, and she didn’t know whether to be disgusted with herself or whether to encourage such shrewish instincts as sensible, ‘The pool?’ Stein repeated, with the odd, deliberate impatience Helen was no nearer understanding but which she was becoming used to, ‘I imagined you in it, all day.’

  ‘I had no time,’ she replied hastily, flushing as his gaze seemed to insolently strip her, in a way that brought heat to her body as well as her cheeks.

  His eyes narrowed. ‘Why not?’ he asked coolly.

  ‘I don’t know,’ she muttered evasively. ‘You forget I haven’t been home for a year. I just wanted to look around.’

  His smile was taunting rather than sympathetic. ‘I find your sentiments difficult to believe in when all you can think of is getting rid of the place.’

  ‘Selling something isn’t always the same as getting rid of it,’ she retorted stiffly, adding, as he looked-or pretended to look-bewildered, ‘Sometimes it’s necessary!’

  ‘Be sure you know what is,’ he remarked ironically.

  ‘I didn’t know we had a chauffeur!’ she snapped.

  Stein ignored this. ‘You think the best way to ward off an attack is to get in first?’ He relaxed with a slight grin.

  ‘Hasn’t anyone ever told you there are smarter ways?’

  ‘I don’t know what you’re talking about!’ she said sullenly, hating his intelligent astuteness almost as much as the things he indirectly accused her of.

  When his brows rose slightly, as she had known they would, her eyes slipped lower on his face. She didn’t realise how intent her glance was as she closely examined his hard-hewn features. Each time she looked at him she felt she had never seen him before, and a sudden sense of panic, as she stared at his mouth, made her breathing shallow, so that her breast rose and fell quickly. She was knocked completely off balance and her nails were piercing her palms before she recovered herself again.

  Stein was wearing a dark suit. It moulded his powerful body flatteringly but was, nevertheless, formal.

  Helen thought he might have changed his mind about coming with her.

  ‘Are you going to the office?’ she asked, feeling she might breathe easier if she kept her mind on other things apart from his face.

  ‘No,’ he replied abruptly, ‘I told you.’

  ‘Yes.’ She couldn’t argue with such implacable tones, such a relentless expression. ‘I just wondered…’

  ‘That’s your trouble,’ he snapped. ‘You wonder far too much, as I keep telling you.’

  Helen was relieved when they reached London, with the tension between them so thick she thought it could have been cut with a knife. If contained a kind of violence that made her shiver. Whenever she looked out of the window she could feel Stein’s glance sliding to her, the impression of dislike so realistic she had to use every bit of willpower she possessed to stop herself from flinching.

  The chauffeur, whom Stein called Paul, dropped them off outside a famous department store. Helen couldn’t hear what instructions Stein gave the man before he drove away.

  ‘What time did you arrange ‘for him to pick us up?’ she frowned after him as he disappeared in the fast stream of traffic.

  ‘You don’t have to look as if your one lifeline has deserted you,’ Stein mocked. ‘At a guess you’ll be safer with me than Paul. I’m surprised we didn’t crash several times this morning. He spent more time looking at you through his mirror than at the road.’

  ‘Don’t be silly,’ she retorted coldly, tossing back her fair head.

  Stein seemed more interested in the line of her throat and how the winter sunshine caught the burnished masses of her hair. ‘You must have noticed the way men look at you,’ he said, somewhat dryly. ‘At the funeral I thought it positively indecent.’

  She flushed. ‘Why don’t you come right out and tell me I encourage it?’ she challenged sharply. ‘I don’t remember receiving that kind of attention. There were a lot of strangers there. I expect they were just curious.’

  Stein cast her a speculative glance as they made their way through the store. ‘A lot of those strangers,’ he emphasised the word, ‘were old business colleagues of your father’s. How come you didn’t know them?’

  Helen bit her lip indecisively. She had been away at school and during the holidays she had never seen much of her father. He had seldom entertained or introduced her to any of’ his associates, not even after she had joined the firm. Once, when she had asked him the very same question Stein was asking her now, he had said he didn’t believe in mixing business with pleasure. If Stein had managed to alter his views on the subject it was more than she had ever been able to do!

  A fleeting resentment because of this caused her to shrug instead of attempting to explain. ‘I was away a lot,’ she hedged.

  Stein took it the way she had known he would.

  ‘Painting the town red, I suppose?’

  She saw his broad shoulders lift the merest fraction and his face harden again, and irrationally her heart sank as she realised how willing he was to believe the worst of her. If she suffered no other retribution for her recent neglect of her father, Stein’s condemnation might be enough!

  Because of a fresh wave of depression which almost overwhelmed her, Helen lost no time in choosing new clothes. She bought recklessly without bothering to look at price tags. Her father had never been very generous with pocket money, not until she’d left the office anyway. Then, as if to try and compensate for taking away her job, he had given her more than he had ever allowed her before, but she hadn’t had time to acquire the habit of spending really freely.

  This morning she didn’t pause to think how much this shopping spree was costing. Swiftly she accumulated what she thought she might need over the next few months. It would save time, later, if she didn’t have to keep running in and out of shops. There would be an enormous amount to do if she had to sell the house and look for a new job.

  While she was making her mind up about various items Stein lounged in a chair and watched her, but to her relief he never offered an opinion. When she disappeared in a cubicle to try on a dress, he didn’t ask to see her in it or try to persuade her to alter a decision.

  His eyes followed her everywhere, much, she suspected, to the model-like salesgirl’s chagrin, but throughout the whole procedure, he maintained a grim, tight-lipped silence.

  ‘Why don’t you try smiling for a change?’ Helen hissed, feeling curiously on edge because of his unremitting attention. ‘If you don’t, she-‘ with a meaningful glance at the momentarily diverted assistant ‘will begin to suspect you’re a typical penny-pinching husband!’

  ‘When I’m your husband people will know, it’s not something they’ll speculate about,’ he rejoined harshly.

  Helen drew back as though stung, wishing she had never said anything. It had been a crazy thing to come out with. With Stein it seemed she could never act normally, but did she have to let him know? He was joking, of course, about being her husband, but it must be her fault for suggesting it in the first place.

  ‘I’m sorry, Stein.’ Her wide blue eyes appealed to him unhappily from her hot face.

  ‘So you should be,’ he retorted softly, his grey eyes coolly unforgiving.

  Helen asked Stein if the account could be sent to her and she could settle as soon as she had seen Harold Dent. He shook his head and replied that it would be easier to have everything put on his account. Helen didn’t feel too happy about this, but before she could ‘protest he was making the necessary arrangements.

  He asked for her new clothes to be packed so that his chauffeur could pick
them up later; His air of authority was unmistakable. Why, Helen wondered bitterly, did no one ever question it?

  ‘Was this where you got the outfit I’m wearing?’ she asked as they left the store for lunch. She wasn’t fond of black, although she knew the colour suited her and was the only suitable thing she had had for London. She had almost worn her jeans, she was sure her father wouldn’t have minded, but because of Stein her courage had failed her.

  ‘No, I didn’t get it here.’ He took her arm to halt her on the busy pavement.

  She tried not to think of the exclusive label. Another bill he would no doubt, in due course, present her with!

  ‘You did a good job,’ she said lightly. ‘Everything fits.’

  ‘I remembered your size,’ he shrugged briefly, as they stepped inside a taxi.