by Anne Mather
‘I managed,’ he responded, without emphasis, bending his head so that his tongue replaced the tormenting invasion of his fingers. ‘Hmm, you taste delicious! All warm, and soft, and yielding—’
‘I’ll scream,’ she choked, struggling to maintain her calm. ‘I—I’ll scream—’
‘Go ahead,’ he taunted, his lips straying across the exposed bones of her shoulder to the scented curve of her breast. ‘Who will hear you? No one sleeps in this wing of the house but you. The family’s rooms are well away from here. We’re quite alone, quite private—’
Tobie twisted away from his exploring lips, desperation taking the place of disbelief. What was he doing here? Why had he come? Did he know who she was? Did he remember? Or was this evening’s fiasco the reason for this incredible intrusion?
‘What about Mark?’ she got out at last, seizing on the only resort left to her, without revealing herself. ‘What about your brother? I thought you cared about him? Surely you would never do anything to hurt him?’
Robert lifted his head, but it was only a moment’s respite. She could still see the sensual curve of his mouth, and the mocking glitter of his eyes.
‘How can I hurt Mark?’ he enquired, to her disbelieving ears. ‘Mark need never know. Not unless you tell him, of course.’ He paused. ‘It’s not as if I’m trespassing on virgin territory, is it?’ He hesitated again, while she gazed up at him with horrified eyes. ‘I mean, Mark told us all about you. About your—affair; and the baby you so conveniently got rid of!’
Tobie’s lips parted, but no sound came from them, and before she could say anything in her own defence Robert’s mouth covered hers. It was an intimate kiss, and one which she could not ignore, as she had attempted to ignore his earlier caresses. Her parted lips exposed the vulnerable sweetness within, and beneath that disturbing pressure she felt herself weakening. The years between them swept away, as her bones dissolved to water.
Any doubts she might have had, that all feeling had died with her baby, were extinguished. So far as Robert was concerned she was as vulnerable as ever, and as the feeling swelled between them she felt any remaining shreds of detachment tom from her. He seemed aware of it, too, lowering himself on to her, crushing her breasts beneath the weight of his body. He kicked the single sheet, which was all that had covered her, aside and the muscles of his thighs imprisoned hers, the hardness of his legs a disturbing reality. His hands were at her shoulders, forcing the narrow straps of her nightgown to yield, and presently she felt the air cool against her skin.
‘Robert, please—’ she groaned, when his mouth released hers to find the swollen peaks of her breasts, but when his lips returned to bruise hers once again, she felt herself weakening.
Dear God, she thought desperately, trying to hold on to her sanity, what did he think she was? Why was he doing this? What motive did he have? And how could she ask, without betraying herself? Was it only what she had said? And what did he know about the baby? What had Mark told him?
His mouth strayed lower over the creamy skin of her midriff as he tore the shred of nightgown from her, exposing her slender form to his gaze. Even in those moments of extreme tension, Tobie felt herself surrendering beneath his eyes, her limbs quivering with emotion as he surveyed her yielding shape. It was becoming increasingly difficult to separate the two parts of her life, the two men she had known as Robert Lang; and to her eternal shame she knew an urgent desire to fuse the two halves into one. Indeed, she was hard pressed not to put her arms around his neck and pull that urgent mouth back to hers, assuage the hunger only he was capable of arousing. It was only the knowledge that he was doing this for reasons other than any she understood that compelled her to go on resisting him, when every nerve and sinew in her body wanted to respond.
‘Tell me about the men in your life, Tobie,’ Robert said now, drawing back to look down at her, his eyes dark and enigmatic. ‘Tell me about the father of your child. The child you so badly wanted to be rid of.’
Tobie stared at him in mortification. He had kissed her and caressed her, exposed her naked body to his gaze, and now he chose to indulge in idle conversation. Or was it idle conversation? What was at the bottom of it? Why was he doing this?
‘Why does that interest you?’ she countered now, without answering him. ‘What kind of man are you? You can lie here with your brother’s girl-friend—’
‘My half-brother’s girl-friend,’ he contradicted her harshly. ‘Let’s be accurate, shall we?’ His lips twisted. ‘And to return to my question—’
‘Why should I answer you?’ she cried, trying without success to wrest the sheet and cover herself. ‘I don’t see what—what my affairs have to do with you!’
‘ Affairs being the operative word, I assume,’ he observed contemptuously, and she caught her breath.
‘What—what did Mark tell you about me?’
‘What did Mark—’ He broke off abruptly. ‘Why, what would you expect him to tell his loving family? Only that the girl he cares about—the girl he hopes to marry—first became known to him on the operating table!’
Tobie bit her lips to prevent them from trembling. ‘He—told you that?’
Robert inclined his head. ‘Mark’s essentially an—honest person.’ He moved his shoulders indifferently. ‘Some might call it weakness. Whatever, our mother is adept at getting to the core of a situation.’
Tobie licked her lips. ‘He told you—that was how we met?’ she ventured, trying to calculate what this might have meant to Robert, and he nodded again.
‘Eventually. My mother wormed it out of him. As I’ve said, she’s an inquisitive woman. She wanted to know all about you. He confessed that originally you’d been his patient. That you’d been brought into the hospital, in a state of some distress. That you’d conveniently lost the child you were carrying—’
‘Conveniently?’ Tobie broke in, apprehensive, yet desperate enough to welcome the truth.
‘Conveniently, yes.’ Robert was not disturbed. ‘You weren’t married, it was obvious you wouldn’t want the child. So—’
‘You think I did it deliberately?’ Tobie was appalled. ‘I miscarried!’ She took an uneven breath. ‘Something happened—and I miscarried! That was what happened. Nothing else.’
Robert’s mouth was a hard line. ‘If you insist.’ But clearly he did not believe her. ‘In any case, Mark was quick to explain that you were in no state to welcome his attentions then. However, you’re a beautiful girl, as I’m sure you are aware, and I expect he told you he could not get you out of his mind. It was nothing short of fate that brought you together again that evening at the Albert Hall. Your mutual love of Grieg’s music, eyes meeting across a crowded foyer.’ His mouth curled. ‘And you’ve been lovers ever since—’
‘No!’ The word burst from Tobie’s throat. ‘No,’ she said again. ‘Not—not lovers, never lovers!’
His scepticism was painful, his contempt for her almost tangible. He looked down at her, his features contorted with disbelief, and she shrank beneath the scornful blast of his eyes.
‘Do you deny you were attracted to him as he was attracted to you?’
‘No—’
‘And do you deny that from that evening—how long ago was it?—eighteen months?—you’ve been constant companions?’
‘No.’ Tobie shifted restlessly. ‘We’ve been friends—’
‘ Friends !’
‘Yes, friends!’ Tobie paused. ‘In any case, it’s nothing to do with you, is it?’ she challenged him in a whisper. ‘Mark and I—we live our own lives.’
‘Not exactly.’ Robert spoke savagely. ‘Mark does as he’s told, as you’ve no doubt discovered by now.’
‘What are you implying?’
Robert snorted. ‘Mark is easily led. Were either I or my mother to forbid Mark to see you again, I’ve no doubt he’d protest, but he’d do it.’
‘I don’t believe you.’
Robert shrugged. ‘That’s your prerogative.’
Tobie moved her he
ad from side to side on the pillow. ‘Why are you doing this?’ she pleaded, once again. ‘What does it matter to you?’ She ventured to look at him. ‘You don’t know me!’
Robert’s lashes veiled the expression in his eyes. ‘No,’ he conceded, after a few moments. ‘But I know of you. And what I know doesn’t fill me with confidence.’
Tobie gasped. ‘What do you think you are? Mark’s keeper? Or simply the seigneur practising his droit?’
Robert’s eyes narrowed. ‘A tantalising idea, you’ll admit.’
Tobie felt too drained to argue any longer. ‘So what do you want of me?’ she whispered. ‘What are you doing here? Why don’t you go away and leave me alone? You’ve told me what you think of me? You’ve shown me your contempt. You’ve hurt and humiliated me—’
‘Have I done all those things?’ Robert interrupted her harshly. ‘Have I really? And how do you think I felt this evening when you implied I was of no use to a woman?’
Tobie gasped. ‘Is that what all this is about?’
‘And if it was?’
‘Like I said before—you’re mad!’ She turned her head sideways on the pillow. ‘Oh, please, go away! Just go away!’
‘Poor Tobie!’
The alteration in his tone brought her head up with a start. Where before there had been anger and condemnation, suddenly there was tenderness and understanding, and she trusted him no more now than she had done before.
‘Poor Tobie,’ he said again, his lips softening into indulgence, and the flickering flame of anxiety was rekindled inside her. ‘So innocent! So falsely accused! And yet you succumbed to Mark’s attentions without a shred of hesitation!’
These last words were said with a return to the harshness he had exhibited before, and Tobie sought to defend herself. ‘That’s not true,’ she protested. ‘After—after what happened, I avoided contact with any man for a long time. Even—even when I met Mark that evening, when he invited me out, I refused—’
‘But not for long.’
‘We became friends, I tell you. Though why I should tell you this, I don’t honestly know.’
‘Don’t you, Tobie? Don’t you?’
She stared up into his dark face, wishing she could read his mind. What were his thoughts? What was he thinking? Was his anger really born out of resentment for what she had said, or was this some sophisticated game of cat and mouse? Could he have come here if he hadn’t known who she was? Was he really so contemptuous of her character that he believed she would not tell Mark what he had done?
What had he done ?
The silence between them grew. To Tobie, the atmosphere seemed charged with electricity, but she was incapable of doing anything about it. She was waiting, like prey in the claws of the hunter, for him to make the next move.
‘You know why I came, Tobie, don’t you?’ he demanded, at last, when her nerves felt as taut as violin strings, and she could only shake her head. ‘I came to drink at the fountain of your youth, to worship at the temple of your beauty—’
‘No!’
‘Why not, Tobie?’ He lowered his head to tease the pulse beating erratically at her throat with his tongue. ‘It’s what I want, it’s what I need! Like you, I need to prove something, and unlike you I can do it.’
‘No! No, you mustn’t—’
Tobie’s frantic efforts to hold him off were futile. He was so much stronger for one thing, and his assault was not only a physical one. She was fighting both him and herself, trying helplessly to suppress the emotions he was arousing within her. What truth now in the things Mark had said, in the jealous words she had uttered? Robert was not impotent, whatever his brother believed, and all the old memories came flooding back to weaken her. She couldn’t deny the aching yearning that filled her arching body; she couldn’t control her hands when they crept up to his face, her fingers curving around his nape, threading through the heavy darkness of his hair; and she couldn’t escape the certain knowledge that she wanted him to make love to her, to invade the silken sheath of her body, that no other man had ever known.
His mouth played with hers, rubbing against her lips, coaxing them to part. His fingers cupped the fullness of her breast, before sliding possessively down over her ribcage to the warm invitation of her thighs. The fine dark hair on his chest was rough against her softness, and she pressed herself closer to the sensuous velvet of his pants, that was all that separated her from the thrusting muscles between his legs. Beneath his experienced lips and hands she was as helpless as a baby, and she gave up the fight without fear of surrender.
‘Robert—’ she breathed, winding her arms around his neck, but the oath he spoke then was not polite. Even though his mouth clung to hers for several seconds after his crude profanity, his intentions were clear when he tore her arms from him and jack-knifed off the bed.
‘No, by God!’ he swore, backing away from her and raking back his hair with unsteady hands. And then, as he regained a little more of his equanimity, he added: ‘No, Tobie, you’re not going to have that satisfaction. I didn’t come here to make love to you, even though you obviously thought I did. I came to seduce you, but not to intimacy, only to this—this unwelcome state of distraction. And I think I’ve succeeded.’
Tobie raised herself on her elbows, her hair in wild disorder, her attitude one of unknowing provocation. Her expression mirrored her shocked bewilderment, and in those first few moments she thought little of pride or dignity.
‘Robert, what are you saying?’ she cried, stretching out her hand towards him. ‘Robert, please—don’t go! I—I—’
‘Shut up! Shut up!’
He turned his back on her then, as if he couldn’t bear to look at her, and his awkward movements seemed to bring everything back into focus. In horror, she remembered where they were and what he had said, and when her eyes lowered to the shameless nakedness of her body, she uttered a little groan before she gathered the sheets about her, and buried her hot humiliated face in the pillows.
She didn’t hear him go. He left as silently as he had arrived, but when she lifted her head and found herself alone, she felt no sense of reprieve. On the contrary, she felt worse now than she had done that awful day when Robert had slammed out of his apartment, leaving her, had she known it, to face three barren years. Those years were over now, inasmuch as she had met him again, spent time with him again, learned to love him again, if she had ever stopped; but what had gone between could never be retrieved, and whatever his reasons for punishing her, she was left in no doubt that he despised her and everything she stood for.
With a feeling of intense weariness Tobie got off the bed now, not bothering to put on her nightgown again. The burning heat of her abasement needed no artificial complement, and she welcomed the coolness that flooded into the room when she opened the balcony doors. Outside, the sky was fractionally lightening, and the greyness before the dawn matched her melancholic mood. She wished she could go to sleep, and wake up far from this serpentine paradise, whose outward appearance was merely a façade hiding the corruption beneath. She wished she need never meet either Robert or his family again, and she knew the craziest impulse to plunge into the sea and swim into oblivion.
A movement below startled her, and she instinctively drew back from the balcony rail. Yet in spite of herself, her eyes were drawn to the tall lean figure that emerged from the shadow of the terrace. Robert, for it was no one else, walked with difficulty down the shallow flight of steps that led to the gardens. He walked, Tobie saw with reluctant admiration. Not easily, it was true: but without sticks, a slow, sometimes awkward tread, that revealed that his condition was by no means as hopeless as Mark and his mother believed.
Watching him, Tobie felt the tears building up behind her eyes. It was hopeless, she thought devastatedly. No matter what he did, no matter how he treated her, she loved him, and she would have given everything she possessed to be able to give him back the years that he had lost.
She was awakened by a hammering on her door.
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Heavy-eyed, she dragged the sheet over her nakedness, and groped for the clock on the table beside her. She couldn’t believe it. It was after eleven o’clock! She had slept almost eight hours!
‘Tobie! Tobie, are you there? Can I come in?’
It was Mark’s voice, and immediately Tobie felt the hot colour sweep into her cheeks once more. How could she face him? How could she face any of them? She had betrayed everything she thought she believed in, and she dreaded the censure she was sure must follow.
Swallowing hard, she called: ‘Yes. Yes, you can come in!’ and tucked the sheet securely round her, imprisoning it sarongwise beneath her arms.
The door opened and Mark appeared, his fair, good-looking face mirroring his impatience. ‘Well!’ he declared, surveying her recumbent state with some disapproval. ‘Do you know what time it is?’
‘Yes.’ Tobie put up a nervous hand to her hair. ‘I’m sorry, I—I must have overslept.’
‘Overslept!’ Mark was scornful. ‘We thought perhaps you were ill or something. You’ve slept almost twelve hours!’
‘No. I mean—well, no, I haven’t really.’ Tobie chose her words carefully. ‘I—as a matter of fact, I didn’t sleep much before dawn.’ She shrugged. ‘Over-excited, I suppose.’ It was an understatement ‘I’m sorry.’ More sorry than he could ever know.
Mark sniffed, shoving his hands into the pockets of his shorts. ‘Well? Are you going to get up now? Or would you like Monique to bring you breakfast—’
‘Heavens, no! Tobie shook her head vigorously. I—I—of course, I’ll get up right away. But don’t worry about breakfast. I’m not hungry.’
Mark squared his shoulders. ‘Nevertheless, you’ve got to have something,’ he stated doggedly. ‘I had enough of Rob, taking me to task last week, when you missed out on lunch and made yourself ill. You have to have something in this climate. I’ll get Monique to make some coffee. We can share it by the pool, if you like.’
‘Thank you.’ But Tobie’s response was absent. So Robert had chastised Mark for not looking after her. So what?
