by Penny Jordan
What she needed, she told herself, was a simple but strict routine, rather like someone recovering from an extremely debilitating illness, which was after all what she was doing, wasn’t it? Only as far as she could see recovery was still merely an impossible chimera—the best she could hope for was simply to exist.
She was glad that Katie hadn’t telephoned. She didn’t think she would be able to conceal her emotional condition from her daughter, and the last thing she wanted was to upset or worry her, and then, three days after Silas had left, and just as she was promising herself that this evening she would have her supper, do some work on her latest commission and then go to bed at a reasonable time, she heard a car pulling up outside.
Her senses were so acutely attuned that they recognised the sound of Silas’s car engine immediately.
Telling herself that it was impossible, that he couldn’t have come back, she tensed, staring avidly at the back door.
When she saw his familiar shape passing the kitchen window, she panicked and would have turned and fled if he hadn’t already seen her.
When he knocked on the door she went slowly to open it, and then stood there speechless with anguish, with the pain of loving him, with all the things she was experiencing at far too late a stage in her life for her ever to be able to recover from the anguish of the experience.
Her first thought that he must have forgotten something made her stand to one side to let him in.
It must be the quality of the late autumn dusk that made his skin look so pale and his face so drawn, she told herself as he came into the kitchen.
‘I was hoping I’d catch you in,’ was his initial comment. He wasn’t looking directly at her, and in another man she would have put his hesitation, his tension down to nervousness, but Silas had never betrayed such an emotion to her before, and she could only think that this visit was a reluctant one, paid out of necessity; a chore he wished to get over as quickly as possible. What did he fear—that she would lose control completely and fling herself at him, begging him to want her, to love her?
Her self-disgust, never far from the surface these days, welled up sickeningly inside her.
How well now she understood the description ‘lovesick’.
She had thought it was an affliction reserved for teenagers, but she was discovering just how wrong she had been.
‘Are you doing anything this evening?’
Silas’s question, raw, jerky, and delivered in a manner so abruptly different from his normal easy, pleasant style, made her raise surprised eyes to his face, and reply without thinking.
‘No, not really. I had intended to do some work but—’
‘Good, then you’ll be free to have dinner with me.’
Again the way he cut through her hesitant sentence was out of character, just like the tension she could almost feel emanating from him.
‘There’s something I need to discuss with you,’ he added curtly.
Her heart pounded frantically. What did he need to discuss with her? Did he feel that it wasn’t enough to have moved out of her house; that he had to explain verbally as well that he didn’t want her? Did he think she was a complete fool?
‘I don’t think—’
I don’t think that’s necessary, she had been about to say, but once again he didn’t let her finish, saying almost pleadingly, ‘Hazel, please… I wouldn’t normally pressure you like this, but it is important.’
What could she say?
‘Well… well, if you insist,’ she responded doubtfully.
‘Good. I’ll wait here, shall I, while you get ready?’
He’d wait? She stared at him. It was barely six o’clock. It wouldn’t take her much more than half an hour to get washed and changed. She had no idea where he intended to take her, but surely it was still a little early to be thinking of going out for dinner? Unless of course it was more that he wished to get the whole thing over and done with as quickly as possible.
‘Well, if that’s what you want.’
She gave him a questioning, uncertain look to which he responded with a smile so warm, so tender almost, that it rocked her whole nervous system.
Like someone under a powerful spell, she walked blindly towards the door and had opened it and was halfway up the stairs before she realised that she hadn’t even asked him where he was taking her.
She told herself recklessly that if she was going to have to sit opposite him and listen to him while he told her that he had guessed her secret and that for both their sakes he felt he must tell her that there was no possibility of his ever returning her love, she might as well do so looking her best, looking like a woman who might potentially excite a man’s desire rather that one who already knew deep within herself that she had been rejected, emotionally, sexually, every way by the only man she had ever loved.
To this end, she showered quickly and then dressed determinedly in the satin teddy which Katie had bought her the previous Christmas, claiming that it was the sort of thing that every woman ought to have in her wardrobe.
‘But it’s wasted on me,’ Hazel had protested, and as she had said the words an expression of such anger and compassion had crossed her daughter’s face that she had immediately felt seared by the pain of her own lack of sexuality.
‘When you do wear it—and you will,’ Katie had threatened her, ‘make sure you wear it next to your skin with nothing on underneath it.’
Then she had been shocked, repudiating such a suggestion with all the prissiness her father would have approved, but now recklessly she rejected the idea of redonning her bra, and instead slid the cool, silky fabric on to her body, shivering a little as its sensual glide reminded her of Silas’s touch.
Stop that, she warned herself, pulling on the silk stockings that went with it, and then wondering with wry self-mockery why she was going to so much trouble for a man who was going to tell her that he was rejecting the sexuality she was finding within herself so late in her life that it was almost as though its discovery was fate’s cruel way of deliberately mocking her.
Unsure of exactly where it was Silas intended to take her, and aware that he was downstairs waiting for her, she couldn’t dawdle over what to wear, and selected a bright red sweater dress that she had bought several winters previously and then discarded as being too eye-catching for her to wear successfully.
It had a neat round neckline, long sleeves, and a hemline which came sensibly down to mid-knee, and yet despite all these features it still somehow or other contrived to have what Katie referred to as ‘oomph’.
The oomph in this case was probably supplied by the row of tiny buttons that went from the throat all the way down past her waist and which were secured with small scarlet loops.
When she had complained, honestly bewildered by her daughter’s comment, to Katie that she could not see why her daughter considered the dress so sexy, all Katie had been able to say was ‘It’s the buttons—there’s something about them that no red-blooded male will be able to resist.’
As she remembered this comment, when she was halfway through fastening them, she hesitated, her skin flushing uncomfortably. Was she being totally honest with herself? Had she really accepted that Silas didn’t want her?
This dress, her underwear, wasn’t some kind of foolish last-ditch attempt to make him aware of her, to make him want her… was it?
As she hesitated, torn between tearing off what she was wearing and reverting to her normal far more sensible attire, she heard Silas moving about downstairs, and the decision was made for her. She didn’t have time to undress, find fresh clothes and redress. Silas was obviously impatient to get the whole thing over and done with, and who could blame him?
Before going downstairs, she reached into her wardrobe and withdrew a long black woollen jacket, which she pulled on over the dress, taking refuge in its anonymity and dullness.
Silas glanced up at her when she walked into the kitchen, but there was nothing in his expression to suggest that he was th
e slightest bit interested in whatever she chose to wear. He looked more like a man carrying a very, very heavy burden, a burden which was occupying his thoughts and emotions to the exclusion of everything else.
When they left the house, he was as meticulously polite as always, opening the car door for her, and settling her inside, but sensitively Hazel noticed that it was as though he could barely bring himself to touch her—as though almost he was actually frightened of doing so.
And no wonder, she derided herself bitterly, her face growing hot with embarrassment and guilt when she remembered the abandoned way she had responded to him, the wanton way she had actually not just encouraged but mutely pleaded with him for him to continue caressing her, to touch her more and more intimately.
Lost in these uncomfortable reminiscences, she wriggled self-consciously in her seat, keeping her gaze fixed firmly on the darkness outside the passenger window.
She felt Silas getting into the car beside her. The door slammed and he started the engine, but resolutely she refused to give in to the temptation to turn her head and avidly study him, storing up additional memories of him to savour and cherish for the times when she would be alone. What was the point anyway in such reckless self-punishment?
As she sat motionless in the car beside him, staring out into the darkness, she had no awareness of where they were going, only of the miles slipping past, so that it came as a shock when he drove into a small village and started to slow down, stopping the car outside one of a small row of cottages.
When she turned her head to look at him, he read the question in her eyes and said simply, ‘What I want to say to you isn’t going to be easy. Selfishly I felt it might be best said in privacy.’
Her stomach muscles clenched, her emotions plummeting downwards in chagrin and misery. What did he think she was likely to do? Create a scene, demand that he return her love? She suppressed a desire to burst into anguished laughter, to tell him that there was no need to prolong their mutual discomfort; that she already knew exactly what it was he wanted to say and that he need have no fears. She might not be able to control what she felt; she might not be able to root out and destroy the unwanted and stubbornly resistant love for him growing inside her, but she could and would ensure that he wasn’t embarrassed by it. But Silas was already climbing out of the car and coming round to open the door for her and she had no option but to walk in silence through the small gate and down the narrow path that led to the cottage’s front door.
Inside, Silas had to duck his head to avoid colliding with the low threshold to the sitting-room.
The room was shabbily and anonymously furnished, but at least there was a warm fire burning in the grate, softening the austerity of its unadorned walls.
‘I haven’t had much time to do anything with it as yet,’ Silas was telling her, as though sensing her unspoken criticisms. ‘As it was I was lucky to be able to find somewhere like this to rent. Apparently its owner died last year and the son who inherited it hasn’t been able to decide whether to sell or to keep it, and let it out to provide income.
‘We’ll have to eat in the kitchen, and I’m afraid it in no way compares with your kitchen. It’s very basic and bare. I miss coming downstairs to the warmth of your Aga in the morning and I suspect I’m going to miss it even more as winter rolls on.’
It was on the tip of her tongue to say that if he missed the Aga that much he could always come back, but her pride stopped her. It would be a stupid thing to say, and pointless as well.
Instead, she told him abruptly and honestly, ‘I’m sorry, but I don’t think I want anything to eat. You said you needed to talk to me. Couldn’t we just…?’
She stopped, and looked away from him, unable to continue.
‘If that’s what you’d prefer,’ he agreed gravely. ‘Come and sit down.’
Assuming that he would opt to sit in the larger of the two fireside chairs, she headed for the other, and promptly walked full tilt into him, so that of course his arms came out automatically, to fend her off, or so she thought, until they suddenly closed around her with such force, such violence almost that she breathed out far more sharply than normal and looked up at him.
‘I’m sorry. I’m sorry,’ he told her rawly, ‘but this is killing me, Hazel. Wanting you, needing you, aching for you so much that I’m damn nearly going out of my mind with thinking about you, and all the time tied by that damned promise I gave you that I wouldn’t touch you while I was living under your roof—but I’m not living there any longer, and you can tell me to stop if you want to. You can tell me that you don’t want this, that you don’t want me…’
His body was shaking with emotion and intensity, sending violent answering tremors zigzagging through her own. She was, she discovered, holding on to him as tightly as he was holding her, raising her mouth for the kiss she knew he was going to give her, and, when it came, opening herself to its passion, its need so completely that she felt Silas groaning his pleasure into her mouth as he kissed her and kissed her over and over again as though he simply could not get enough of her.
Dimly she was conscious of him sliding her jacket off her shoulders, and then moulding her against his body, a body which she could tell now was openly aroused, pulsing hard and male, when he slid impatient hands down over her back until he was cupping her bottom and urging her so intimately against him, moving so erotically against her, that it was her turn to gasp and shudder, to cling helplessly to him, letting him mould her to him as though she was as pliant as silk.
‘I love you, you know that, don’t you?’ he was muttering against her throat. ‘I think I fell in love with you the very first time Katie started telling me about you. “Come home with me and meet her in person, if you’re so fascinated by my mother,” she teased me. “She’s one of your greatest fans and I know she’d love to meet you.” I persuaded myself that it was just because I needed somewhere to stay while I did my research. I told myself that the woman who sounded so entrancing, so… so different when described by her daughter, could hardly turn out to be the same in the flesh, and then I saw you and I realised that nothing Katie had said about you had been an exaggeration. You were… you are perfection.’
He felt her shake, and cupped her face, so that he could look into her eyes.
‘Don’t you dare laugh at me,’ he told her fiercely. ‘All right, so I know I’m making a fool of myself; that men of my age simply do not fall so deeply in love that they’re incapable of doing anything other than fulfilling that love, but that doesn’t mean that what I’m feeling is any the less painful. Just because it’s ridiculous…’
Hazel stopped him, putting her fingers against his lips. ‘I wasn’t laughing,’ she told him huskily. ‘Silas, you don’t understand…’
She stopped, still too shy, too insecure, too uncertain to go on, looking at him instead with all that she was feeling revealed in her eyes.
He looked back at her. She heard him catch his breath and then suddenly he was kissing her again. Not this time with intensity, with ferocity, but with slow, gentle tenderness, with adoration as well as need, with… with love, she recognised dreamily as she responded to what he was showing her, letting him see in turn how much he meant to her.
‘Is this real?’ he demanded huskily, reluctantly releasing her mouth and cradling her against him. ‘I feel as if I’ve stepped into an impossible dream. I brought you here tonight to try to talk to you, to begin to woo you, if you like. To show you that there could be something between us, that I was capable of behaving with restraint, of curbing my passion, my need, my love, to allow you time to get to know me, and hopefully to come to love me. I thought I’d ruined my chances for ever the other day, but the sight of your naked body, the feel of you in my arms, the sound of your response to me…’
He gave a violent shudder, his eyes suddenly turning dark.
‘Have you any idea what you do to me?’ he whispered against her ear.
‘I think so,’ Hazel told him shyly, ‘and
if it’s anything like what you do to me—’
He let her go so abruptly that she almost fell.
‘You want me?’ he demanded roughly.
‘Isn’t it obvious that I do?’ Hazel retorted.
The smile he gave her made her flush a little. It was full of tenderness and love.
‘No,’ he told her wryly. ‘Oh, yes, I knew that you were responding to me, but I also knew that you were a woman who had never been allowed to develop her sexuality, to appreciate her sensuality…’
‘You mean you thought I’d probably have reacted like that to any man who happened to touch me?’ Hazel responded, aggrieved.
He laughed a little.
‘Not exactly. But you’d already made it obvious that you didn’t welcome any physical intimacy between us, and then I’d gone and given you that idiotic promise that I wouldn’t touch you while I was living with you…
‘Getting this place became essential after the other day. I knew then there was no way I could stay with you and keep that promise, and I was terrified that if I broke it it would mean the end of whatever slender chance I might have of getting you to see me as a human being who had fallen desperately in love with you, rather than simply some man who wanted sex from you.’
‘I’m sorry,’ Hazel apologised, sensing the pain in his voice. ‘But you see I just don’t have the experience to tell the difference.’
‘I know that, my love.’
He drew her to him again, holding her tenderly. She was so bemused that she could hardly think. Silas loved her. Silas loved her… It seemed impossible but it wasn’t.
She was still unsure of herself, though, still painfully aware of her shortcomings.
‘You don’t mind, then? That I’m not… that I haven’t… that I don’t have the kind of sexual skill and knowledge that a woman of my age should have?’ she managed to finish jerkily.
There was a long silence and then Silas cupped her face, turning her to look directly at him.
‘I love you,’ he told her firmly. ‘And that means I love each and every single minute component that goes up to making you the person you are. While I might and do deplore the way your father prevented you from exploring your own sexuality, and the burden of guilt he made you carry, it’s you, the person you are, whom I love, and that has nothing to do with any spurious sexual skill, or lack of it. You can turn me on more intensely, simply by being in the same room with me, than could the skills of the world’s most experienced courtesan. Come here and let me show you what I mean.’
