‘No, Cliff!’ The refusal broke from her lips, full of condemnation.
‘What do you mean—no?’
‘I can’t say yes to that proposal.’
‘What’s wrong with it?’
‘If you don’t know, I can’t tell you.’
He looked puzzled, then angry. ‘Look—I’ve managed to hang on to my freedom for a long time. I’ve said I’ll marry you. What more do you want?’
He seemed to think she ought to be falling all over him in gratitude because of the sublime sacrifice he was making. But what of her sacrifice? It would hardly change things at all for him. Not like the shattering changes it would bring to her. He would have everything he had now. His work, his friends, with the comfortable and homely addition of a wife. But her life would alter drastically. She was luckier than most females in the flexibility of her occupation. She wouldn’t have to give it up completely to go with him. She could cook and compile her cookbooks wherever she had a stove and a typewriter, but if anything exciting came up, like the series of programs for television, she wouldn’t be on instant call. It was irrelevant that she had already decided that her future didn’t lie in television, the point was that she would have to adapt her life around his, fit in with his commitments and the conditions of his job.
It wouldn’t have mattered one bit to her, and she would gladly have given up everything if it was asked of her—in the right way! The work she had been so totally and joyfully immersed in before Cliff reappeared in her life was no longer the be all and end all of her existence. But she had worked too hard at forging a career for herself for it to be dismissed lightly. She wasn’t going to jeopardize it to such a degree—to any degree—for a bigoted man with only his own self-interest at heart.
She rounded on him. ‘I want you to want me, not just my body. I’m a person, I want to be respected as such. I won’t just be an object that you can sate your selfish lust on. I want a proper proposal, not that sniveling moan, “All right, I’ll marry you.” Well, I won’t marry you! The proposal I accept will be one I can be proud of, one I’ll want to remember all my life.’
‘Do you know what you want, I wonder? First you want marriage, then you don’t. I’ve made enough of a spectacle of myself as it is. My pride has to be considered, too. And I’m not proud of showing how weak I am where you’re concerned. The line has got to be drawn somewhere.’
‘Is that all you’ve got to say?’
‘Every last word.’
Even then, she longed to throw herself into his arms and touch her lips to the unyielding harshness of his mouth. She had to make herself walk away from him and go upstairs to pack. Her hands obeyed her brain’s instructions, but her heart wasn’t in it.
This would be the second time she had walked out on a man. She had got over Jarvis in a relatively short time, but she knew she wouldn’t ever get over Cliff. Was she too exacting? She was accusing Cliff of wanting everything his own way, but in one respect she was no better herself. He’d asked her to marry him! Wasn’t that a miracle in itself? Did she have to lay down the law and insist on the proposal’s being worded in a different way? Cliff might think that if he conceded, it would set a precedent, and he would be saddling himself with a bossy wife. Why couldn’t she have said yes? If she had, she would be in Cliff’s arms at that very moment instead of packing to go. She didn’t want to go. And what if Cliff had backed down? If he’d groveled at her feet and told her all the things she wanted to hear and pleaded with her to marry him, would she have been any better suited? About the sweet things, yes, even if they weren’t whole truths. A lie, if repeated often enough, seemed like the truth, and perhaps she could have made it true in time. But the groveling part wouldn’t have appealed to her at all. She wouldn’t want to humble Cliff. But that was what she had been trying to do.
He had been anti-marriage for so long, what had made him finally come round? She was remembering Cliff’s words of comfort the time she broke down and admitted her guilt over taking Aunt Miranda for granted while she was alive and not appreciating her enough. ‘Love is taking someone for granted. It’s knowing without being told. The words are just the frosting on the cake,’ he’d said. If Cliff were to be believed at the moment, he had proposed because he lusted for her body, and if marriage was the only way he could get it, then okay. She had taken offense at that, refusing him on the grounds of needing to be wanted for herself as a person and not just for her body. She had considered him bigoted and egotistical. A bigot was a person who holds steadfastly to an unreasonable opinion. Well, the opinions that she held dear and that seemed reasonable to her were unreasonable to him. So didn’t that make her a bigot in his eyes? And egotistical. Wasn’t it egotistical of her to believe that her body was such a turn-on, so fantastic that a man would throw away the set ideas of a lifetime to have it? She wasn’t that conceited, surely? She wasn’t conceited at all about her body. It was quite nice, but she would have said it was only average on sex appeal. Instead of being insulted, she ought to have been flattered that someone as superb as Cliff looked at her in that way and was prepared to go to such lengths to get her—if that was all it was.
But of course it wasn’t! It wasn’t possible to divorce the person from the body, and if Cliff wanted her, it meant that he wanted her for herself, which was all she really wanted. Love was a word that was bandied about a lot, but what did it mean? It meant having a deep affection for someone, and tender feelings.
Cliff had shown tender feelings for her the night she went to his bed and he refused to take advantage of the impulse that had taken her there. He had shown tender feelings when he’d been waiting for her to come home with her slippers warming. Who needed the icing? Cliff might not know it himself, but what had really trapped him was that tender feeling called love. It had bent even his will of iron.
With that, lots of other thoughts came flooding in, things she hadn’t exactly been wrong about, but which she hadn’t been right about, either, because again she had been guilty of what she was accusing him of: looking at the situation with a biased viewpoint. Things like: he would have to play host to her friends. She didn’t get a chance to list any more in her mind because a prickly feeling at the back of her neck told her that Cliff was standing at the door, watching her.
She turned to look at him, and he said, ‘Save yourself the trouble of packing any more things. I intend to tip the lot out. You’re not going anywhere.’
‘I’ve already decided that for myself. If you’d used your eyes properly, you’d see that I’ve started to take out the things I’d packed.’
‘Because it dawned on you that it would be insane to drive with the roads the way they are?’
‘No. It would have been, but that isn’t the reason. As soon as I was composed enough, I was coming down to ask you what the conversation we’ve just had was all about.’
‘I’m hanged if I know. I guess it all boils down to the fact that I didn’t handle things too well. You’re right. It was a pretty miserable proposal. I’m willing to have another go.’
She wouldn’t let him climb down any further than that. Instead, she would try to measure up to him. ‘It isn’t necessary. I’ve been very stupid. If the offer is still open, yes, please, I want to marry you very much.’
* * *
She hadn’t imagined that life could be so beautiful. She had to drag herself from Cliff’s side to return to the television studio for the final recording. He had taken it phlegmatically when she told him about that, declaring that he wasn’t surprised—hadn’t he previously stated that he wasn’t surprised at anything she did? ‘Of course, some surprises are better than others,’ he said, the dark gleam in his eye leaving her in no doubt about which surprise he was referring to. ‘The best Christmas present I almost received,’ he joked. But his voice was serious as he went on, ‘You’re the best thing that ever happened to me, and I could so easily have lost you through my cussedness.’
‘My cussedness,’ she insisted.
&n
bsp; ‘All right, our cussedness. What I’m trying to say is, if you think you’ve got a career in television, it’s okay by me.’
‘What does “okay by me” mean?’
‘It means I’m not overjoyed at the idea of having a wife on television. I don’t want to share you, but if it’s what you want, I’ll put up with it.’
She thought how different his attitude was from Jarvis’s.
‘It isn’t what I want. My ambition is to be with you.’
* * *
She shed tears when she got news of Edward Banks—but they were tears of gladness. He was responding to the treatment he was having. Cliff went with her to visit him in hospital, but Hannah was there, and Edward had eyes for no one else. Ros had high hopes of something coming of that. If their obvious affection for each other didn’t result in another wedding, she would be very disappointed.
Sometimes, on waking, she’d catch her breath on the horrible fear that it hadn’t happened, that it had all been a dream. The arm possessively round her waist was solid reassurance that it was true. Slowly, she would turn her head and look into the dark eyes of the man responsible for her permanent state of exalted happiness. No man had a more contented or happier wife. The gentle ardor with which he carried her into the throbbing heat of passion never failed to amaze her. He took her body into tender keeping and led her into rapture. She’d had an idea that it would be good between them, but it surpassed everything she had hoped for, and it was getting better all the time.
She felt very humble, undeserving of all that bliss. And she loved him so much that it hurt. Usually, he was the first to wake, but one morning, a few weeks after their marriage, she was waiting for his eyes to open, the question on her lips in keeping with the last thing he had told her before she went to sleep.
‘When did you first realize you loved me? Something must have triggered it off. What was it?’
‘I’m not quite sure, but this might have had something to do with it.’ He reached out to the bedside table for his wallet, and from it he extracted the joke slip that had come out of the Christmas cracker about the girl getting to kiss a lot of frogs in her search for her prince.
She gasped. ‘I meant to pick that up and save it as a memento. You got to it first.’
‘Didn’t I just! And it burned a hole in my wallet. Wouldn’t give me a moment’s peace or respite.’
She was touched that they had shared the same romantic impulse, even though she wasn’t sure what he meant. ‘I don’t understand. Was it because when it was so horrible between us, when we were quarreling, or icy and distant, it reminded you of the wonderful time we had together?’
His fingers caressed her midriff, releasing tiny bubbles of joy just below the surface of her skin, bubbles that burst to wrap her in an iridescent glow. A teasing smile came to his mouth. ‘No. For thinking of you kissing all the other frogs.’
‘Oh, Cliff!’ She giggled.
‘If anyone got to kiss you, I wanted it to be me.’
Her lips lifted in confident anticipation. The sweet, fierce passion in his eyes warmed her as his tender hands brought her closer and his mouth lowered to possess hers in a long, clinging kiss.
Table of Contents
Cover
Title Page
Copyright
Chapter One
Chapter Two
Chapter Three
Chapter Four
Chapter Five
Chapter Six
Chapter Seven
Chapter Eight
Chapter Nine
Chapter Ten
That Tender Feeling Page 16
