The best way to rid herself of his presence was to begin to undress, ready for her shower, she informed herself cynically. He hadn't wanted to look at her, to touch her, in months. She hadn't known why, not until now.
Almost defiantly, she kicked off her shoes, lifting her hands to the buttons of her light cotton blouse, but her desperate ploy didn't work because he said tunelessly, 'Zanna Hall is here,' and Beth froze, her back to him, her heart pounding because this was crunch time. He was going to tell her something she didn't think she was strong enough to hear, and he went on levelly, his deep rough-velvet voice under strict control, 'With her son. Harry is two years old. They will be staying for a few days.'
'Oh, really.' If she sounded uninterested she couldn't help it. To pretend indifference was the only way she would be able to handle this.
In retrospect, she was thankful that he had never told her he loved her, said those words she would have given anything in the world to hear, the words that would have opened the dam of her own deep love for him, had her confessing the abiding strength of her passion. Had she been fool enough, unguarded enough, to do so then this weekend would have been even more humiliating, more degrading—if that were possible.
'Aren't you going to ask why?'
He had moved. She could tell by his voice that he was standing much closer now and she shivered, biting out, 'No,' tightly, very quickly, because she already knew why Zanna was here, with Charles's son; she didn't need him to spell it out.
Blindly, she dragged the first garment to come to hand out of the cupboard, still with her back to him because she couldn't bear to see the final rejection in his magnificent eyes when he told her that he no longer wanted her as his wife.
He swore then, softly, almost inaudibly, and, clutching the dress close to her chest like a piece of armour, she heard him say, the first intimation of strain in his voice, 'For some reason best known to herself, Mrs Penny refused to make a room ready for Zanna and young Harry.' Attuned to every last thing about him, she heard the softening of his tone as he mentioned the child. His child. The son he had wanted. The son she had been unable to give him. And he was going to ask her to do it, to make time to settle them in, make them comfortable. It was unbelievable! And she was proved right when he went on, a rare and raw emotion colouring his voice, 'I wonder if you'd mind—?'
'I've already said I'm pushed for time.' She was ready for him; she'd learned that particular trick ever since she'd made herself face the fact of his growing distaste for her. A useful defence mechanism. 'You invited them here, apparently. You find them somewhere to sleep—I don't care where. It's up to you.' And walked rapidly, rigidly, like a jerky puppet, across the bedroom floor towards the door of her bathroom, still clutching the dress in front of her.
Her voice had emerged coolly, and she didn't know how it could have done because there was a scream building up inside her and her heart was pattering hysterically beneath her breast, and she slammed the bathroom door behind her, ramming the bolt home, leaning against the smooth dark wood.
Not that Charles would have attempted to follow her, of course. He had lost what interest he'd ever had in her when she had miscarried their child. Nowadays they treated each other like strangers—only this evening had he broken the habit of distance that had been deepening ever since that dreadful night three months ago. And no prizes for guessing why, she thought on a flare of anger, dragging her clothes off with shaking hands.
'Are you all right?'
The last thing she had expected was this rare show of compassion, a softening of the austerely crafted, remote features. But then, she thought, sidestepping him, her hands tightening on the coffee-tray, he was probably sorry for her. His pity was the last thing she wanted.
'I'm fine. Shouldn't I be?' she challenged, then regretted the impulse because she didn't want to give him the opportunity to tell her exactly why she should be feeling so very far from 'all right'. Dinner had been an ordeal she would rather forget, with Zanna's vibrant beauty, her easy wit, making her the centre of attention. And heaven only knew what had been going on inside the Clarkes' heads! Donald Clarke had been Charles's company accountant for years, right through the time of his tempestuous affair with Zanna. She had lived here at South Park in those days, on and off, had acted as his hostess at many a weekend such as this. Donald and Mavis would be dying to retreat to the privacy of their room to chew over the scandal of Zanna's return. And they could hardly have forgotten the wild obsession of Charles's love-affair with the woman who, even then, had left a string of broken hearts in her wake, or forgotten his brooding desolation when she had finally walked out on him, too.
'I thought you might have had one of your headaches,' Charles said, a thread of tension running through the expressed concern. 'You have that pallid look about you.'
As he took the tray from her and waited for her to precede him through the kitchen door she muttered, 'Thanks!' meaning his unflattering description, and nothing to do with the way he'd appeared to help her with the unwieldy tray. True, since the road accident that had resulted in the loss of their child, she had suffered from violent headaches, a legacy not only from the concussion, but from grief. But did he really have to draw her attention to the fact that beside the glowingly vibrant beauty of his former lover, the mother of his child, she looked like a sadly anaemic mouse?
'If you'd like to call it a day, I'll make your excuses,' he offered as they walked through the vast hall together, and she glanced up at him quickly, suspicion narrowing her glittering green eyes. But instead of the suspected sarcasm, a desire to be rid of her, see her tucked up in bed and safely out of the way, she saw only compassion. And she looked away quickly, hot tears in her eyes. She had known she was losing him long before now, had tried to deny it, to hang on to hope, but his action in bringing Zanna here, and their son, meant that all hope was gone.
And he was standing too close, the tautly muscled length of him, his breadth of shoulder, the sexy narrowness of hips moulded by the fine dark suiting making the muscles around her heart clench with pain, and when she caught her breath on a strangled sob he put the tray down on one of the tables set against the panelled wall and cupped her face in his hands, the narrowed eyes dark with sympathy, his mouth tight as he told her, 'I'm so sorry, Beth. The last thing I ever intended to do was cause you pain.'
And at that moment she believed him. His obsession with Zanna had been legendary, and it still lived. He probably didn't want it to, but it did. There was nothing he could do about it, and the existence of their child made her impossible to resist.
Beth made a huge effort to control herself, fighting the almost irresistible impulse to lay her head against his chest and weep for the love she had lost without ever having it. If he knew just how much she was breaking up inside he would pity her even more. And that she simply could not stand. So she said thinly, jerking her head away as if his touch, instead of making her yearning for him unbearable, in fact disgusted her,
'I'll believe you—thousands wouldn't!' And he could make what he liked of that, anything, just as long as he never learned the truth—that she loved him so much she would die for him if she had to. 'I think I will go to bed.' She swung on her heels, not looking at him. 'I'd be grateful if you would make my apologies.'
Needless to say, she didn't sleep, didn't even try to. She stared the ruins of her marriage in the face as the light faded from the sky at the end of the glorious June day, alternatively loving and hating him.
The love had begun as an infatuation. She'd been fifteen and yearning over the sexy Charles Savage had been quite the fashion for the village girls. Recently down from Oxford with a first-class degree, he'd driven fast cars and brought a new girlfriend home every weekend, or so it had seemed. His mother had been dead for many years at that time, his father losing his grip on reality. His younger brother, James, had been around then, too. But he'd refused to have anything to do with the ailing family business, leaving it
to Charles to knuckle down and retrieve the fortunes of the family at South Park.
Staring from her lonely window at the purple dusk, Beth wondered what had happened to James. The last she'd heard, through Charles, had been the news of the death of James's wife, Lisa. Somewhere abroad. She should have made it her business to find out more, to write to him, expressing her sympathy. She had never met Lisa; she and James had not even attended hers and Charles's wedding two years ago. There had been a rift between the brothers, that much she had known, although Charles had always refused to talk about the younger man. And, at the time, she excused herself—she had been suffering badly from the miscarriage of her child. Nevertheless, she should have made some effort to express her sympathy…
She sighed. She didn't know why now, of all times, she should be thinking of James. Except that, remembering earlier times, when she'd first fallen in love with the unattainable Charles Savage, she could recall one incident with utmost clarity.
It would have been around five years ago. She and her bosom friend, Alison, had just started up in business on their own, but they'd made time to go to the May Day hop in the village hall. Charles and James had put in an appearance, as they usually did, and of course, by that time, Beth's contemporaries had got over their collective infatuation for the heir to South Park, were going steady with more prosaic, yet attainable local boys.
But not Beth, of course. What had begun as a fashionable schoolgirl crush had, annoyingly, grown into love. Not that she'd confided in anyone, of course. Not even Allie. It was a secret she'd kept to herself—as if it were a pernicious vice—only James, it seemed, guessing the truth.
That was the first time she'd seen Zanna. She'd swept into the village hall on Charles's arm, looking like a rare hot-house orchid in a field of common daisies, and James had followed, a pale carbon of his devastating brother, his features sulky. And later, sweeping her round the floor in a duty dance, James had told her,
'You never did stand much of a chance; Charles was always attracted by the rarer species. But this time he's cast his net and captured the incomparable Zanna Hall, so you, my dear little sparrow, won't get a look-in.'
At the time, she'd been too mortified by the way he'd guessed the truth about her to say a word. Besides, from the way Charles looked at the newest lady in his life, he was clearly besotted. And she wondered now if James had resented his brother's easy conquest of the most delectable females around, and if that lay behind the rift. In any case, shortly after that, James had married. He'd been working abroad at the time, as a civil engineer, and as far as she knew he'd never brought Lisa to South Park.
She wondered, fleetingly, if he had been surprised when his brother had married the insignificant Beth Garner and knew he wouldn't be surprised at all to learn how the marriage had broken up. His long-ago words at the May Day dance had been prophetic.
She woke feeling grim. She had fallen asleep on the wide window-ledge and she stumbled to her feet, her movements ungainly. Feeling her way around the furniture, she located the light switch and banished the darkness.
If only she could banish the darkness within, she thought despairingly, looking at her smooth, lonely bed and knowing she would never get to sleep until something had been sorted out.
One way or another.
Contrary to her earlier, shock-numbed instincts, she knew she couldn't get through the night, the rest of the interminable weekend, without talking this through with Charles.
It would take courage to go to the room he had thrown her out of after her illness. But she could manage it. She had to.
He had taken her to the master bedroom when she'd first entered South Park as his bride; it was there she had known those nights of ecstasy, the immature hope that one day, sooner or later, he would grow to love her as she loved him. There that their child had been conceived.
But, returning from hospital, she had found that her things had been moved to the room she now occupied, and he'd explained that he thought it best if they slept apart until she was fully recovered. Not that he'd been unkind about it, she thought with a tiny shudder. He'd never been unkind, ever; he'd been a considerate, warm, appreciative—if demanding—husband. Even after the accident and her miscarriage, when any affection he'd felt for her had died along with the child they had lost, he had still treated her with respect and politeness.
Which made his cruelty in bringing Zanna and their son here all the more devastating.
Yet he wasn't a cruel man. Self-assured, fairly ruthless in his business dealings, frustratingly enigmatic at times and sometimes impossible, he was all of these things. But never deliberately cruel.
Clinging to that knowledge, she tightened the belt of her silky robe and left her room, her soft mouth set with grim determination. She wasn't going to stand meekly by and watch her life and her marriage fall apart without trying to do something about it.
That Charles would choose to stay with her, having never loved her, particularly since, following the accident and the miscarriage, she had been told she might never conceive again, when he could have the woman who had once dominated his life, and the child they had created together, was a pretty forlorn hope, but she was an optimist, wasn't she? She had to be, to have agreed to marry him in the first place!
But even that failed her as she reached the corner where the corridor turned to lead to the master bedroom suite. With the influx of house guests, all the rooms were occupied, so where else would Zanna sleep, except in his bed?
Walking into that sumptuous room and finding them tangled together in the huge bed was something she simply couldn't face, and the determination that had brought her this far drained out of her, leaving her limp and shaking, leaning against the wall for support, her heartbeats frantic.
But finding them together would settle the thing once and for all, wouldn't it? she told herself tiredly. She couldn't go through the remainder of the weekend not knowing what was going on, not knowing for sure. She was out of shock now, and had to know.
Pulling away from the wall, she walked doggedly on down the dimly lit corridor then gasped with anguish as she saw the glimmer of a night-light from the partly open door of the nursery.
Charles and Zanna had put their child in the room she had so lovingly created for her baby! She didn't know how much more she could endure! Yet, driven by a need she couldn't put a name to, she silently approached the open door, moving like a sleep-walker.
And through the gap she saw them. The sleeping child, the parents looking down on him. Charles, his dark hair rumpled, his towelling robe revealing long, tautly muscled, hair-roughened legs, his arm around Zanna's naked shoulders—naked except for the narrow shoestring straps which supported her clinging satin nightdress—and he was saying softly,
'Don't worry about it. Everything's going to work out. There isn't a man alive who wouldn't welcome that child into his family. And I'm no exception.'
CHAPTER TWO
'So what's happened?' Allie wanted to know, her round face very serious. And Beth turned from the stance she had taken up at the sash window, looking down on the deserted Sunday-afternoon high street of the market town and replied evenly,
'Nothing's happened. I feel like getting back to work. Lots of married women do it.' That was her story, and she was sticking to it. Best friend or not, she couldn't confide in Allie; she would, and quite truthfully, say 'I told you so!'
'If you say so,' the other girl said slowly, stringing the words out, then jumped up from the sofa, her smile brisk now. 'I'll make a drink, then we can see what's on the books. Tea or coffee?'
'Oh… Tea, please.' Beth tugged herself together—she'd been miles away, wondering how she was going to come to terms with life without Charles, and caught the quick upward jerk of her friend's brows and warned herself to be more careful.
Watching Allie walk through to the kitchen of the small flat above the agency office, Beth pulled in a deep breath, exhaling it slowly. So far she'd done wel
l. The struggle back to self-respect had begun and she deserved to feel proud of herself.
As soon as the last of the weekend guests had departed earlier that afternoon she had made up her mind to drive over to see Allie. She hadn't driven since the accident. Charles had been behind the wheel on that terrible day when a drunken youth had overtaken on a blind bend and had caused the accident that had cost her the life of her unborn child.
There hadn't been a thing Charles could have done to avoid it, and the fact that he had emerged with minor cuts and abrasions, while she had landed in hospital with a severe concussion, several broken ribs and a dangerous miscarriage, had been the luck of the draw.
So today nerving herself to take her car out had been the second positive step back on the road to the recovery of her self-respect.
And the first had come when Charles had turned to her after they'd speeded the last of the departing house guests on their way, telling her quietly but with a firmness that brooked no argument, 'Come to the study, Beth. Zanna and I have something to tell you.' He turned back towards the house, sunlight glinting on his raven-dark hair, highlighting the harsh, angular planes of his face, and if there was any expression in those narrowed smoky-grey eyes she couldn't read it.
But this time she was arguing, fighting her corner, and she had tossed back at him levelly, 'Sorry. I've an appointment. Whatever you have to tell me will have to wait.' Wait until she had sorted out the next few weeks of her life, could present her husband with a fait accompli. She knew damn well what he and Zanna had to tell her and she needed to get her say in first. There were winners and losers in every game but she was determined to make sure that, as far as appearances went, she didn't come out of this hateful mess in second place.
Savage Obsession Page 2
