Love Forbidden

by Barbara Cartland

  It was only when he was out of sight that she realised that she was trembling a little, her fingers linked together, her whole body tense.

  She had not looked at Dart Huron since the first moment when she had seen him standing there and when he advanced upon them.

  Now, still keeping her head turned away, she said in a very small voice,

  “I think I – had better be – going back, too.”

  “What are you trying to do?” he asked.

  She raised her eyes at the question, but, as the moonlight was on her face, while his was in the shadow, she only had an impression that he was very tall and his shoulders very broad and there was a tenseness about him as if he was poised on the threshold of something.

  “I thought you were different,” he said suddenly in a low voice. “I thought that you were not like other women. I thought you were cold and indifferent to men. I had a very different picture of you and now tonight you have changed it. You are asking for something, inviting something. Is it kisses that you want?”

  She knew then that he was angry with a strange uncivilised anger that had something almost savage in it. And then, before she could answer or move, before, indeed, she could realise what he was about, he had taken her in his arms and tipped her head back against his shoulder.

  “Is that what you are wanting?” he enquired.

  There was something raw in his voice and something brutal about his kiss. His lips were hard, compelling and passionate against hers.

  She tried to struggle, but his arms were like bands of steel about her slight body.

  He held her closer and ever closer. She felt him kiss her wildly and passionately, at the same time so roughly that it was an expression of savagery rather than of any softer emotion.

  He kissed her mouth, her closed eyes, her white cheeks and then her neck. His lips lingered there, seeking the little pulse that was beating wildly and then finding again the softness of her bruised mouth.

  “Please – please – let me go!”

  She tried to cry out the words, but they were nothing louder than the breath against his lips.

  “Don’t! Please don’t!”

  His passion was frightening her. It was something she had never encountered before – a man possessed, as, it were, by a devil, a man whose self-control had snapped, a man driven only by the wild surging emotions within himself.

  “Please – oh, please – ”

  She fluttered and panted against him, her hands pushing ineffectually against his chest, twisting her head to escape his mouth and finding always that it was impossible and that a moment later she was captive and prisoner beneath his lips.

  “Is this – what you wanted?”

  He asked the question again and now his voice was hoarse and for a moment she had a flashing glimpse of the fire in his eyes, as burning and passionate as the kisses that he had rained upon her face.

  She struggled and then felt suddenly that she could fight no more. She was utterly helpless, utterly weak against his strength.

  She was frightened too – frightened to the point when her voice seemed to have died away in her throat and she could only quiver and tremble because her opponent was a man stripped of the veneer of civilisation – primitive and savage in his desires.

  “Have mercy – ”

  She heard her voice as if it was the voice of a stranger.

  And then, suddenly, her lips were free of his and he threw her from him with a violence that was in keeping with the brutality with which he had held her close.

  She fell against the corner of the sofa. Her hands went out to steady herself, but her long dress tripped her and she subsided slowly, a froth of billowing tulle, in a crumpled heap on the floor.

  But already he had left her, striding away across the lawns without looking back.

  She heard herself give a little frightened sob – and then, as she watched him going, growing fainter and fainter until he vanished into the darkness, the tears of terror that she could not explain, even to herself, began to run down her cheeks.

  “How – could he – how could – he?” she whispered.

  Chapter 11

  Aria slipped up the backstairs and into her bedroom.

  There, with the door closed and locked behind her, she stood trembling. Far away in the distance she could hear the soft strains of music and outside there was the sound of cars driving up to the house or away from it, the chatter of voices and a sudden burst of laughter.

  She realised that she was icily cold, her hands so chilled that when she held onto the back of the chair it was almost as if she could not feel the damask beneath her fingers.

  After a moment or two she sat down as if her knees could no longer support her. As she did so, she had a glimpse of her reflection in the mirror on the dressing table.

  Her cheeks were very white, but her mouth was red not with lipstick but from the brutality with which her lips had been bruised and kissed.

  Her eyes were dark with something like terror lurking in their depths.

  She stared at herself for a long moment and then with a little moan hid her face in her hands. Could this have really happened to her? She, who had all her life been, not only afraid, but disgusted by any display of emotion and untrammelled passion.

  She felt as if his arms were still round her. It was as if, with an almost tiger-like fierceness, his lips were still showering those burning kisses on her face while her hands strove ineffectually to push him from her.

  Why had she not screamed, she wondered. And she knew that her voice had been strangled in her throat, which he had covered too with those wild unrestrained kisses.

  She felt herself shiver and yet her eyes were dry and she was very far from tears. She was not even angry, only numb with her own kind of astonishment that this could have happened to her.

  After a long time, while the soft melody seemed to mingle with her thoughts, haunting her, taunting her with the very sweetness of it, she rose to her feet and began slowly to take off her exquisite dress of green tulle that Lady Grania Henley had lent her.

  Some frugal, practical part of her mind told her that the dress must remain unspoiled. She must not damage it because she could not afford to pay for it.

  Strangely enough it showed no signs of the roughness that it had been subjected to.

  Aria could feel that her legs and thighs were bruised from the manner in which he had flung her against the sofa and onto the floor, but the dress was unharmed and there appeared not even to be a spot of dust on its twinkling, shimmering surface.

  She hung it up in the cupboard and, slipping into her cotton dressing gown, sat down in the chair, trying to think, trying to bring the chaos of her thoughts into some resemblance of order.

  What should she do? Slowly, as if she almost resisted the decision, she came to the conclusion that she must go away. She could not stay here, even for the short time Dart Huron was remaining in England and feel that that moment of violence lay between them.

  She felt she could not face seeing him again, knowing that his lips held her captive, feeling the imprint of them burning on her face and neck. And yet some proud resolute part of her character resented the implication that she should play the coward.

  Must she run away from something she had contracted to do, an arrangement she had made with forethought, from the decision she had taken, knowing that the consequences might not be pleasant?

  And yet in her wildest dreams she had not anticipated this.

  What was wrong with her that he should treat her in such a manner? What had she done to invite such an insult, both to herself and her womanhood?

  Much, much later she realised that the band was no longer playing and the music had ceased. There was no longer the sound of cars outside. There was only silence – the quiet softness of the night.

  She rose to her feet and went to the window. Should she run away? She had an almost irresistible impulse to leave the house now, while everyone was asleep, to leave
no address or message – just to vanish.

  Yet even as she thought that she might do such a thing, the conviction came to her that wherever she went, however she strove to hide herself, he would, if he wished to do so, find her.

  Again she shivered. Why should she attribute to him such omnipotent powers, the sensible part of her brain asked. But her instinct was stronger than reason. If he wanted her, he would find her.

  ‘He is only making use of me,’ she told the night. Somehow the words did riot ring true even to herself. Then as she stood there, looking out into the moonlight that touched everything with a magic of its own, making the shadows seem deep and sinister and the lawns and gardens a Fairyland of aesthetic beauty, she heard someone come out of the door that lay a little to the left of her window.

  The moonlight was full on him. He was bareheaded, his hands were deep in his pockets and he walked slowly across the grass in front of the house.

  She realised that he was deep in thought. He walked slowly, and yet it seemed to her with some sort of purpose in his movement, across the lawn, still in the moonlight, until he came up against the huge herbaceous border that blocked his path.

  He stood for a moment looking down at it, the flowers a pattern of light and shade with their colour divorced from them by the night. And then suddenly he turned and looked directly up at the house and, so it seemed to Aria, at her window.

  She drew back quickly, sheltering herself behind the silk curtains and yet, even as she did so, she wondered if he had seen her movement and had known that she had been watching him.

  She would have liked to have the strength and courage to draw the curtains again and not to watch him, and yet something stronger than her own wishes held her mesmerised so that she could not take her eyes away from him.

  He was standing utterly still – he might have been a statue sculptured on that very spot. What was he thinking? His head was thrown back. She was sure now that he was looking at her room. And yet, how could she be sure of any such thing? It was but a fantasy induced by her fear of him.

  And then abruptly he moved away, walking not back towards the house but across the garden towards the drive.

  He disappeared in the shadow of the trees and in her imagination she followed him, knowing that he was walking out through the iron gates and onto the Surrey hills.

  It was easy there to walk for miles without coming into contact with any human being and she felt that was what he was about to do.

  What devil was he exorcising within himself, she wondered. What thoughts accompanied him as he moved along through the moonlit darkness?

  She knew it would be impossible to sleep and, when eventually she went to bed, she left the window uncurtained and she watched the moonlight fade gradually until, so imperceptibly that she was not quite certain when it occurred, the dawn came.

  It was then she realised that all through the hours before when she should have been sleeping she had been listening – listening for his return from his lonely walk.

  She must have fallen asleep for the last two hours before she was called.

  When the housemaid knocked, she awoke with a start to find that the sun was pouring in through the window, the room bathed in a golden haze.

  “I let you sleep a little longer this morning, miss,” the girl said as she set down Aria’s early morning tea. “I thought you would be tired after last night. It must have been three o’clock before the band packed up.”

  “Was it as late as that?” Aria asked vaguely.

  “It was, indeed, miss! I expect you enjoyed yourself. Everyone was sayin’ that you were the prettiest person there.”

  The girl spoke with undisguised admiration and Aria forced a smile to her lips.

  “Thank you,” she said softly and the young housemaid smiled back at her.

  “You have all our best wishes, miss,” she said and then, as if shy at having made her expression of goodwill, she hurried from the room without waiting for Aria’s answer.

  She would need their good wishes, Aria thought, as she rose slowly, realising as she climbed slowly out of bed that she had not yet made a decision on whether or not she should leave. She felt her heart begin to beat almost suffocatingly at the thought that she must see Dart Huron this very morning.

  It was too late now to run away. If she went, she must go with propriety, telling him the reason and saying goodbye. Quite suddenly she knew that she could not do it. It was one thing to contemplate flight without explanations and without argument. It was quite another to go downstairs and to find him, worse still to take him to task for what had occurred last night.

  She knew that it was impossible for her to speak about it. It was not only the embarrassment that would be so terrible, it was the thought of arousing again within herself the terror he had subjected her to.

  She put on her plain cotton dress and brushed her hair back from the forehead into some semblance of severity. Last night she had looked alluring, today she would have none of such feminine tricks.

  She would appear as she had when he had first seen her, masquerading as someone older than herself, an efficient, level-headed secretary about whom no one, she had imagined, would entertain such thoughts and feelings as he had shown last night.

  When she was ready, she stood hesitating in the middle of the room and realised once again that she was trembling. It required all her resolution to hold her chin high, to open her bedroom door and walk into the passage.

  The door of her sitting room was open. She would have passed it, but something outside herself drew her attention to a piece of white paper laid on the blotter.

  She walked across to it and picked it up with fingers, which seemed to move quicker than her brain.

  The writing was only too familiar.

  “I have gone riding. I should like to see you at ten o’clock in the library. D.H.”

  She stared at the message for some moments and then realised that it was, in some ways, a reprieve. She could feel her tenseness oozing away from her, her hands were no longer trembling as she put the piece of paper back again on the blotter.

  She went downstairs to breakfast. The majority of the female guests breakfasted in their bedrooms anyway and this morning they had not yet even been called. There was no sign of Lord Buckleigh.

  When Aria entered the room, there were only two rather pale-faced young men yawning over their coffee.

  “We’re playing golf this morning,” one of them announced to Aria.

  “Just the two of you or are you making it a foursome?” she enquired.

  Even as she spoke, she thought how strange it was that she could still speak conventionally, still make the bright inconsequential conversation that was expected of her, while somehow her whole being rose in revolt against it.

  ‘I must get away! I must! I must!’ she told herself.

  When breakfast was over, she had little time for private thought. There were a great many arrangements to be made, meals to be chosen, two transatlantic telephone calls to take and a whole host of other small details to be attended to.

  The clock on the mantelpiece striking the hour startled her so that she turned to face it almost incredulously. It could not be ten o’clock! It could not be! And yet it was!

  She had a moment of panic when she thought that it was impossible for her to face him. What would happen if she disobeyed his command? Would he come in search of her?

  That, strangely enough, was infinitely worse than going to him and, almost as if she was drawn by a magnet, she walked along the passage and down the stairs into the front hall.

  There was no one about. Somehow she hoped that there might have been. She had a longing to speak to someone, anyone, so long as they brought her a moment’s respite, delayed even for a few seconds, the ordeal that lay ahead of her.

  And then her hand was on the library door and, drawing a deep breath, she went into the room.

  She had expected him to be seated at his desk, but instead he was standing
with his back to the empty fireplace smoking a cigarette. She tried to meet his eyes, tried to look at him as she advanced across the room, but somehow it was impossible.

  She could feel the blood rising in her cheeks, she could feel herself tremble and hated her own weakness.

  She wanted to be proud, aloof and indifferent – she knew instead that she was a quivering mass of sensibility.

  “I want to talk to you.”

  His voice was very deep and it seemed to her surprisingly hesitant.

  “Yes.”

  It was an effort to force the monosyllable from between her lips, but somehow she managed it.

  “You know what I want to say.”

  “No.”

  “I think you do.”

  There was a pause, a silence in which neither spoke, and now at last she was brave enough to look at him.

  Was it her imagination or did his high cheekbones seem more prominent than ever, his eyes darker and more inscrutable?

  There was something about his mouth too and yet she could not dwell on that, could not even bear to think of the lips that had touched hers.

  “I want to apologise. You realise that?”

  The question was almost sharp. Because she had nothing to say, she could only incline her head, praying that he did not realise how weak and helpless she felt, while the nails of her clenched hands were digging desperately into the softness of her palms.

  He looked at her, then suddenly he threw his only half-smoked cigarette on to the unlit fire.

  “Oh, hell!” he ejaculated. “You’re not helping me and I might have expected it. I know that you have every right to be angry, a right to feel insulted. But let’s face it, it’s your fault.”

  “My – fault!”

  The words were very low and yet the surprise was involuntary.

  “Yes, your fault. Do you suppose that your disapproval, your smug disdain, has not got under my skin? I have endured it long enough. Day after day I have seen you watching me and my friends with that impervious aloofness as if you were immune from the ordinary frailty of human beings.