‘I don’t think I have enough energy yet,’ she replied ruefully to Beryl, ‘and I’d have to go home again and change. Another time, perhaps.’
Beryl nodded and began making a great fuss of her.
She made her sit close beside the warm fire and rang immediately for tea. ‘How is Stein?’ she asked, pouring Helen a cup and passing a plate of biscuits. ‘I haven’t seen him for a while.’
Gary, lounging in a chair by Helen’s side, laughed sarcastically. ‘She’s been waiting all day to ask.’
Beryl, shooting him a withering glance, said sharply, ‘Don’t take any notice of him, Helen. Stein’s taken me out a few times, and I consider we’re friendly enough for me to ask how he’s keeping.’
Helen felt herself go suddenly pale and hoped the other two didn’t notice. So Beryl was another of Stein’s conquests. She wondered how many more she would meet. ‘As far as one can tell he’s keeping very well,’ she answered carefully.
‘What does he do in London every day?’ Beryl enquired eagerly, and, when Helen didn’t reply, ‘Why do you think he’s never married? I mean, with his looks and money, you’d think someone would have grabbed him long ago.’
‘Don’t imagine a lot of women haven’t tried,’ Gary drawled cynically while Helen winced at Beryl’s outspokenness. ‘I knew him in New York, before he came to settle in this neck of the woods.’
Helen realised she had no idea exactly what Stein had done or where he had lived before she had known him.
She had naturally assumed he had lived in London, but with business connections all over the world, it could have been any city, anywhere.
Beryl didn’t seem too disappointed by Helen’s inability to satisfy her curiosity, but Helen soon became aware that it might only be a matter of time before Beryl began asking more pertinent questions. She tried to divert her without success, and was dismayed but not surprised when her worst fears were realised.
‘Tell me, darling,’ said Beryl, with a concern which Helen couldn’t believe was genuine, ‘now that you don’t have your father any more, can you go on living with Stein at Oakfield? I don’t know what your exact position is, of course, but everyone’s wondering. I know you’ll forgive me, but as an old friend …’
Fortunately, at this point the doorbell rang, resounding through the house, interrupting Beryl’s sugar-sweet discourse. Whoever was there was obviously full of impatience.
Beryl paused with a frown, her attention now riveted on what appeared to be a minor commotion in the hall, but even as her hand stretched towards the bell, presumably with the intention of finding out what was going on, the door burst open and Stein strode in. A servant hovered behind him, but he shut the door in the man’s face.
He didn’t seem in a good mood. Helen stared at him, feeling cold and sick with alarm. He looked positively livid, and she shrank from him involuntarily.
Approaching her, he ignored both Beryl and Gary as he jerked her ruthlessly to her feet. ‘Why did you come here?’ he asked curtly. ‘You know you aren’t fit to be out!’
Trembling a little with surprise and fright, Helen swallowed. Stein’s mouth was a taut line and she felt frozen by his icy stare.
‘I felt like a change,’ she explained.
He said coldly. ‘You should have waited until you were stronger.’
Beryl, regaining her customary composure, came pouting to his side. The startled expression on her face was replaced by one of triumph. ‘It’s nice of you to call, Stein,’ she smiled. ‘I haven’t seen you for ages. Couldn’t you stay for dinner? Helen won’t, but Gary could take her home.’
He merely glanced at her and refused politely before turning his attention to Helen again. ‘Where’s your coat?’ he asked curtly.
‘I didn’t bring one.’
He looked ready to explode, and Helen shivered at the burning rage in his eyes. ‘You must be out of your mind!’ he snapped.
She stared at him, clenching her hands in an effort to stop herself trembling. ‘I thought I’d be warm enough in Gary’s car.’
‘You need your head examined!’
‘There’s no need to bully her!’ Gary intervened for the first time. ‘She didn’t come to any harm.’
‘That remains to be seen.’ Stein stared at him contemptuously.
Helen felt the hot colour rise to her cheeks. The last thing she wanted was to quarrel with Stein in front of Beryl and Gary. Stein wasn’t, considering her at all. He seemed bent on humiliating her. She could see the antagonism in Beryl’s eyes as he calmly disposed of her clinging arm, and the sharpness in Gary’s. She had no wish to be the subject of their idle curiosity, once she and Stein had gone. Didn’t he realise how they might speculate? They weren’t good enough friends to believe the situation between Stein and herself was none of their business.
‘You aren’t by any chance accusing me of anything?’ she heard Gary asking Stein belligerently.
Stein stared at him coldly. ‘I’m very familiar with what goes on in New York.’
Gary appeared to lose some of his boldness and colour. ‘Everyone sows a few wild oats, even you,’ he retorted.
‘I wasn’t aware we were making comparisons,’ Stein snapped. ‘Where would you like to begin?’
Immediately Gary backed down. Helen wondered why. Gary’s rather chubby good looks didn’t exactly suggest vice of any kind. She would have thought Stein’s love affairs might be much more lurid than anything Gary had indulged in.
‘I’m sure the girls have no wish to be bored,’ Gary muttered.
‘Bored isn’t perhaps the word I would have chosen,’ Stein returned cynically.
Gary gasped, retreating from such cool derision in a way which made Helen suspect her snap judgment of his character had been inaccurate. Stein obviously knew things about him that he had no wish to be made public. Glancing at the cold mockery in Stein’s face, Helen thought she could understand Gary’s apprehension.
Stem would make a very good friend but a terrible enemy!
She was so disturbed she swayed, going very white. Instantly aware of this, Stein put his arm firmly around her, while Beryl stared at her with sullen, accusing eyes. Shifting uncomfortably, Gary cleared his throat.
‘You don’t have to take her home, Mr. Maddison,’ he said truculently, with the air of a man determined to make one last stand, even if the odds were stacked against him. ‘I brought Helen here and I’d like to take her back.’
‘There’s no point, now I’m here,’ Stein snapped.
‘Helen comes with me.’
Clearly intent on carrying out his threat, he turned to leave, but Helen, although she trembled, resisted stubbornly. ‘Don’t I have any say in the matter, Stein?’
‘Are you determined to make a scene?’
Helen heard the underlying menace in his voice and was aware of his hand firmly on her waist, and of the tremors it was sending through her. Beryl’s eyes were fixed on it and her mouth had a vicious little twist which Helen remembered from the past. Beryl might be fun, but she could also be extremely unpleasant when something displeased her.
The flush on Helen’s face deepened. ‘I would like to stay a little longer…’
‘No,’ Stein put his foot down uncompromisingly, his fingers digging in her flesh warning her to give in.
‘1-1 haven’t been here much more than an hour.’
She still tried to fight him, although she realised that later he might easily make her suffer for it.
‘You’ve been ill,’ Stein’s mouth tightened. ‘You shouldn’t have been out at all on a night like this. Now come on!’
She turned her head to look at him, again meeting a wholly ruthless expression. Instinctively she sensed she didn’t have that much time. If she persisted in arguing he was going to say or do something which might make her regret she hadn’t obeyed him immediately.
What Beryl and Gary were thinking she couldn’t imagine! Stein had practically forced his way in and hadn’t even tried to be ta
ctful. Knowing Beryl’s spite and the length of her tongue, Helen suspected that everything that had happened since Stein arrived would be quickly relayed to as many of her friends in the district as would be prepared to listen. And a lot would, she thought bitterly. Not so much happened in these parts, in the depth of winter, that people could afford to pass up a juicy morsel of gossip like this.
Helen had a wild desire to round on Stein angrily and tell him what he could do with all his apparent care and attention. Yet suddenly, when she was about to, her courage failed her. She would tell him what she thought of him, but later. Suddenly, surprisingly, all she wanted to do was go home. Anywhere where she could be alone, away from Beryl and Gary’s prying glances and Stein’s disapproving stare.
Shivering and weary, she knew she had to get away.
Forcing a smile to her lips, she said a quick goodbye.
‘Stein’s probably right,’ she admitted, in a last attempt to make everything seem normal. ‘I have been ill and caused a lot of bother. And I think he feels responsible for me because of my father.’
As they drove back to Oakfield, Stein said savagely, ‘You could make a living as an actress one day. After I’m finished with you!’
‘Will I have to work?’ she mumbled, in a haze of tiredness.
‘How do you mean?’ he frowned.
She scarcely knew what she was saying, or why she should choose that particular moment to provoke him.
‘After a man is finished with a woman, doesn’t he usually provide her with ample compensation?’
‘You’ve had that already,’ he snapped. ‘I’m the one who hasn’t received anything!’
He would never forgive or trust her again, she realised, her eyes suddenly heavy with pain. All his actions were laced with violence, while he was continually suspicious of everything she did or said. She could feel in him the perpetual need to punish. Not once when he held her had he displayed any tenderness, only a driving desire to make her suffer.
She didn’t reply, saving her energy, with a kind of growing hopelessness for the confrontation which would undoubtedly come. She didn’t have much strength left; Stein’s anger appeared to have drained her of it almost completely.
In the study, which she was gradually training herself to think of as his, she asked suddenly, ‘Who told you where I was? Mrs Swinden?’
He thrust her none too gently into the same chair where she had sat on the dreadful afternoon her father’s will had been read and he had found her running down the drive. Her heart was beating over fast and she refused to believe it was because he had insisted on carrying her from the car.’ She could still feel his strong arms around her, his breath on her face as he had stared at her grimly and silently.
When she mentioned Mrs Swinden he paused as he straightened. ‘I told her to get in touch with me if ever you attempted to leave Oakfield.’
‘I was only with friends!’
His mouth tightened, but he didn’t comment.
‘I suppose you asked where I was as soon as you returned from London?’ Helen said sharply.
Stein bent over her, his eyes hard and glittering, allowing her to feel the full force of his anger. ‘I was in my office when she rang,’ he said bitingly.
‘Your office!’ Helen’s face went an angry red, her voice incredulous. ‘You mean you actually asked her to spy on me?’
He was entirely unmoved by her flare of temper. ‘I have to have someone keeping an eye on you.’
‘To think,’ Helen raged, ‘I was beginning to trust her!’
‘Since I pay her,’ Stein grated, ‘she has to do as I say. I wouldn’t be too hard on her.’
Helen began grappling with the implications of what she had just learnt. She stared at him, her chin tilted, her blue eyes angry but bewildered. ‘When Mrs Swinden rang you must have dropped everything and come straight home?’
‘A brilliant piece of deduction!’ Suddenly he reached out, drawing her to her feet again, his hands gripping her savagely, as if she continued to madden him.
‘But in future you’ll stay here, unless you’re going somewhere with me. I won’t have you going out with anyone else.’
Trembling, she muttered, ‘You don’t own me!’
His face was masklike and hard. ‘I’ve told you I want you. Men like Gary Phillips can wait their turn.’
She flushed at .the contempt in his voice. ‘I don’t know how you feel able even to touch me,’ she whispered, ‘since your opinion of me is so low. I think you’re crazy!’
‘Your thoughts don’t interest me,’ he replied witheringly and with emphasis.
‘I know they don’t,’ she retorted with a little more spirit. ‘You demonstrated that quite clearly in front of the Phillips. What do you imagine people are going to say when they hear about what happened today? You could have been more tactful. As it is, the whole countryside is talking.’
His mouth quirked cynically. ‘I don’t have to ask where you got that information from.’
‘Beryl wouldn’t lie to me.’
His hands tightened contemptuously on her arms.
‘She sounds a fine friend!’
‘She probably considered it her duty to tell me.’
Helen tried to free herself from his painful grip, but he wouldn’t let her go. ‘Isn’t that what friends are for?’
‘I wouldn’t have thought so. I’d advise you not to see her again.’
‘Yet you take her out,’ she exclaimed.
The grey eyes held a chilling anger. ‘I’m afraid you’re mistaken. I’ve met her on one or two social occasions locally, but that’s all.’
A flutter of relief touched Helen’s heart like a balm and she closed her eyes briefly so Stein wouldn’t see it.
When she looked at him again her face was expressionless.
‘We aren’t just arguing about the Phillips, though, are we? You’re trying to keep me a prisoner. You don’t want me going out and mixing with anybody, least of all my old friends.’
Stein studied her without relaxing an inch. ‘Not until you’re stronger and I’m able to come with you.’
‘I am stronger,’ she insisted defiantly, ‘and if you don’t let me go my reputation will soon be in shreds!’
His eyes smouldered derisively. ‘It’s been in that state for a while, I imagine, and nobody’s fault but your own.’
The tension in him was so strong it made her quiver, but she felt too weary to try convincing him afresh how wrong he was about her. He wouldn’t believe her, anyway. ‘Your attitude isn’t helping,’ she said dully.
‘I won’t let you go,’ he snapped.
His face was taut, and Helen shrank from such cold determination. Her heart was beating too rapidly as her temper rose again. ‘Why don’t you keep me locked somewhere out of sight?’ she cried. ‘You won’t let me go, but I believe you’re secretly ashamed of me. Perhaps my so-called reputation is more than you can bear!’
‘It could be,’ he muttered harshly, an odd hoarseness in his voice.
If his admission startled her, she didn’t know what to make of it. ‘Why not think again, then?’ she suggested hopefully.
He laughed without humour, staring down at her.
‘All I can think of, night and day, is this,’ he said thickly, his hands beginning slowly to move up her arms.
As Helen stood as though hypnotised, his fingers trailed over her shoulders to draw her closer. With his head bending towards her, his intention clear to read in the smouldering darkness of his eyes, she began trembling, but was unable to stir. One part of her felt starved for his kisses, while she wanted to run from the raging frustration she sensed in him. Yet she dared not even struggle. Suddenly she had no desire to incite further violence and would have given anything to have been able to soothe him.
She knew there must be a way, but inspiration failed her, defeated in the end by her traitorous senses which destroyed her ability to think. Would it always be like this? she wondered, as his lips paused a
mere fraction from her own.
She started in alarm as he caught her long hair in a cruel grip. Suddenly realising the danger of the situation, she tried to struggle free of him. Expecting some form of brutal retaliation because of this, she was surprised when his mouth merely touched hers lightly before moving to her neck. He was treating her with a restraint which puzzled her as she could feel a threatening tenseness in his long, lean body.
‘Don’t fight-me,’ he whispered, inadvertently confirming her suspicions, ‘or I won’t guarantee not to hurt you.’
Chains of Regret Page 13
