With the engine still running, Lucas sat inside, presumably expecting her to go back and get in.
Over my dead body, she thought furiously. With a jerk of her head she spun round and began walking on down the road. Another toot on the horn accompanied her, but she kept on walking with the wild idea that if she ignored him he would simply go away.
Suddenly the Land Rover was right beside her. The passenger window opened and she heard Lucas saying in a peremptory tone, 'Get in, Goldie. Hurry up, for heaven's sake! What are you playing at?'
She gave a short laugh and marched on as if he hadn't spoken. The engine revved hard then, and she saw the vehicle lurch forward, coming to a halt just in front of her. As she drew level, Lucas leaped from the driver's seat and lunged towards her.
'What the devil do you think you're doing, you stupid idiot? I could have run you over, and then what?' He shook her so violently, she nearly fell when he released her. She lifted a hand and was about to strike him when she thought better of it.
'Don't you dare touch me, you brute!' she yelled instead, all her pent-up anger exploding in a sudden volcano of rage. 'Why don't you get back to your precious friends instead of following me about the countryside? I'm sure they're far more interesting to somebody like you. I don't know how you can bear to drag yourself away from them!'
'What the hell did you walk out for, you stupid fool?' he rasped, ignoring what she'd said. 'Do you realise I've spent the last hour going into every damned shop in town asking if they'd seen you? I thought you'd been abducted—though who the hell would want to abduct you, heaven knows!' He gazed down at her with eyes full of ire. 'You look terrible, like a drowned rat. Some Hollywood starlet, I must say!' A derisive laugh was wrenched from his throat. 'If you were wearing your old clothes, you'd be soaked to the skin,' he observed with satisfaction. 'Why didn't you think before you set out?'
'It wasn't raining when I left, that's why. Do you think I'm a weather prophet? Though you, no doubt,' she drew herself up, 'as a true peasant, can probably predict the weather from the flocking of ravens.'
'From clouds, actually, though more usually I turn the radio on.' He almost smiled. 'Look, get in, Goldie. I'm getting wet, too, standing out here.'
'Should I care?' she shouted, backing away. 'I'd rather be dead than go anywhere with you!'
She turned and began to run down the road as fast as she could. She wanted to turn to see how he'd taken that, but dared not in case he was right behind her. In a second or two she heard the Land Rover start up again and come rattling after her.
Once more he stopped in front of her, but this time she was ready, and when he came round the side of it she ran the other way and carried on without looking back, jogging on down the lane, slipping and sliding now in the mud as she reached some trees in a little copse that straddled the road. She heard the engine start up again, but this time he merely chugged along behind her, making her feel suddenly childish to be behaving like this. It seemed as if he was always putting her in the wrong, just as he had done on that first day at the auction. Feeling humiliated, she turned and ran up to the open window, and glared in at him.
'I hate you, Lucas de Maine. You're so self-righteous, you make me sick. You can just go to hell!' She remembered what he had said in the hotel and, spurred on by the injustice of it, she added, 'You seem to think yours is the only way to live, but let me tell you, you're wrong. Just because you've done a bit of travelling in the Army, you think you know everything, but you haven't a clue about other people. You're stuck in this narrow, feudal little backwater like some caveman --' She stopped. She hadn't meant to say quite that. It might make him think she thought he was macho. He was, but that wasn't the point.
She opened her mouth to continue, but he cut in, saying, 'Have you quite finished? Because, if so, I'm going to ask you once more to get in. If you don't, I'm driving on and to hell with you, too.'
'Good! That's the best news I've heard yet. Get going, damn you!' She hit the side of the Land Rover with her clenched fist, satisfied when it made a dull, tinny rumble.
'So that's your last word, is it?' His white face peered through the window at her.
'You bet it is, buster!' She felt she remembered saying those particular lines in a film, but before she could work it out he gave a sort of snarl of anger and gunned the engine. The Land Rover shot off through the closing curtains of rain, and soon she was trudging along in a silence made all the more profound because of the shouting that had preceded it.
It was a good half-hour before she reached the village, and then she had the humiliation of walking through it in a thoroughly wet and dishevelled state, self-consciously imagining that everyone could tell what had been going on. She knew she had behaved childishly, but once started it had been impossible to stop. It was like the auction, when she had simply gone on bidding because of the roller-coaster effect.
Still, Lucas was beyond the pale. Pride would never let her bend to him now.
She had got as far as the gate, hurrying with her head down as the skies seemed to open up, when a figure loomed in her path.
'Cooled off yet?' growled a voice in her ear.
She skidded to a halt, but not before her shoulders had been taken in a firm grip, swivelling her round.
'Go away, Lucas! I'm soaked and it's all your fault!' she shouted in his face.
'Nonsense. I asked you several times to get into the Land Rover. It was entirely your decision to walk it.'
'I'm not standing here arguing. Let me go. I want to go in to get dried.' She tried to struggle out of his grasp, but he held her more firmly.
'Come back to the millhouse and have a hot bath. You'll be getting pneumonia at this rate.'
'So what?' she argued, trying to writhe out of his arms. 'A lot you care!'
'It's silly not to look after yourself. You're not a child, though heaven knows you've been acting like one this afternoon.'
'I have? Of all the cheek!' she yelled, face flushing with renewed rage. 'I suppose it's childish to feel bored when a lot of boring people are talking among themselves? What was I supposed to do—sit and listen like the invisible woman?' She started to beat at his chest, as he didn't seem to have any intention of releasing her, but he grabbed her by the scruff of the neck and held her at arm's length like a puppy.
'I know any trick you might think of and a hundred more,' he told her grimly, 'so save your efforts. Now, for once do as you're told.'
He started to frogmarch her across the lane.
'I've got to go in and see Hetty; she'll be worried,' she protested, digging in her heels so that her feet skidded along when he simply dragged her with him.
'No, she won't. She's gone. Both of them have. There was a note on the door and the key under a plant-pot. Her daughter's gone into labour, and they've gone over to be with her.'
'What?' She tried to stand upright long enough to see his face to find out whether he was making it up or not, but she could tell by the way he spoke that he meant it.
'I've got the note in my pocket,' he told her when they reached his front door and he had to release her to unlock it. 'You can read it once you've had your bath.'
'If you imagine I'm going to have a bath with you skulking around --' she began, then stopped, remembering how scathing he had been before about her assumption he only wanted to seduce her.
He gave a sigh and bundled her into the house. 'Boots off on the mat, please. I don't want Mrs Turner having to clean up your muddy footprints.' He waited while she took off her boots. 'Now the jacket,' he ordered.
'You're so damned bossy!' she snarled. 'Can't you behave like a normal human being instead of some tinpot sergeant major?'
'Certainly, when I'm faced with a normal human being. You, however, are behaving exactly as I would expect a spoiled Hollywood starlet to behave. Flouncing out when you fail to become the centre of attention. Hurting yourself rather than giving in gracefully when you know you're in the wrong.'
'You smug devil!'
she shouted, beside herself with anger at the cool nerve of the man. 'I've heard some distortions, but that takes the biscuit! I sat there for hours being bored out of my mind while you and your friends rattled on about damn all! Centre of attention? It was all any of you could do to acknowledge my existence. Why the hell should I sit there and listen to your drivel?'
'I'm sorry if you feel so strongly about a simple drink with friends of mine,' he told her coldly. 'We both knew from the moment we met that we had nothing in common beyond a superficial sexual attraction. I hadn't wished to bore you to quite such a degree of distraction.'
His face was expressionless. Goldie wanted to hit him to get some sort of spontaneous response, to get some sort of warmth from him, but he preserved a manner of icy indifference as he told her where the bathroom was. 'It's no good your going over to Hetty's. They left soon after we did this morning, turning off the central-heating system, not knowing when you'd be back. Here, read their note. They're going to ring here round about teatime.'
'Here? Why here?'
'Because they mistakenly assume we're in the throes of a romantic relationship, I expect.' He smiled tightly and went out, leaving her to climb upstairs in her soggy clothes and lock herself in his bathroom. She sat on the edge of the bath as it rapidly filled with hot water, and listened to her heartbeats. They were twice as fast as they ought to be. It was terrifying what anger could do. She had never hated anyone as much as she hated Lucas de Maine.
CHAPTER SIX
When she came downstairs after her bath she was wearing a man's brocade dressing-gown she'd found hanging on the bathroom door. Her own clothes were too wet to put back on. She carried them in a soggy bundle and stood in the kitchen doorway, wondering where she could dry them. She couldn't escape until she had some dry clothes to put on.
Lucas looked up when he heard her and came over, taking the jeans and the checked shirt from her. They'll dry in front of the Aga,' he told her, giving her a piercing glance as if to judge her mood now she'd had time to cool down.
His expectation that she might be ready to back down irked her just as much as his words earlier, and she pushed past him and went to stand beside the Aga herself.
'You'd better have a tot of rum,' he said as he arranged her clothes on the bar next to her. 'But I've made a pot of coffee, too.'
I'm supposed to fall over myself with gratitude, she thought angrily. Well, I shan't! She merely nodded, her expression one of disdain, and went over to the pot on the table, pouring herself a cup then replacing the pot, even though his own cup was empty and waiting beside hers. He noticed her omission without comment, and she could almost feel him thinking how like a typical spoiled starlet. She turned back to the Aga with a tightening in her throat that made it almost impossible to swallow the hot black liquid.
'That was yes, please, to the rum, wasn't it?'
'I'm sorry,' she said in her coldest tones, 'I didn't realise I had to put in an application for it.' She didn't look at him.
'Some people don't like rum. I couldn't assume you did, without asking.'
'Why not? You assume plenty of other things.' She half turned, blushing when she saw the way he was looking at her.
'I thought I had reasonable grounds for the assumptions I'd made about you so far,' he rasped.
'Of course,' she replied sarcastically. 'Very reasonable grounds!' She knew she was behaving badly, but he was driving her to it with his smug, supercilious clarity. Why couldn't he be wrong-footed for once? She ignored him while she drank her coffee, and when he pushed a fragile glass of dark rum towards her she sipped it rapidly, not caring if it burned her throat.
Despite all he had done for her since she came in, she was beginning to shiver. He regarded her without speaking for as long as he could, then got up suddenly with a short exclamation. He went out and came back almost immediately with a plaid rug in his hands.
'I don't damn well care if you imagine you create a more glamorous effect in that dressing-gown. Get this over you, will you?' He flung the rug at her, making her reach out automatically to catch it.
She draped it over one arm. 'All right?' she demanded.
'Not all right,' he growled. He crossed towards her. 'Damn you, you know how I mean. Like this.' Reaching out, he draped the rug over her shoulders, then, gripping it on either side, he held her trapped for a moment, looking down at her with a strange expression on his face before slowly beginning to pull her in towards him. 'You're really asking for it, darling. You really are . . .' He seemed to tower over her, keeping her trapped, making shudders of a different kind scud over her as she saw what was in his mind.
'I don't know what you mean --' she began in her most frigid tones, trying to step back and failing. They swayed together and he tightened the rug around her again, so that their bodies were touching.
'I mean when you come down hot from a bath with all that pink nudity showing in the opening of your gown, flashing your naked thighs at me --' His voice had grown husky and he lowered his head a little. 'I mean, that's when you're really asking for it.' Again his head lowered, his mouth curving in the beginnings of a smile. 'Am I right?' he whispered as he lowered his lips to hers.
For a moment she resisted, all his accusations ringing in her ears, but then the demanding mastery of his touch triumphed and she sank against him, opening her lips to the exploring tongue, submitting with a soft sigh to the movement of his hands over her naked skin beneath the stiff brocade. Reaching up helplessly, she slid her arms round his neck, arching against the hard muscles moulding themselves against her slender form, allowing him to take possession of her with an impulsive, instinctual reaction that was wholly new.
His tongue probed victoriously into her mouth, establishing his mastery, melting all thoughts of resistance while his body crushed against hers, his hands moving rhythmically over her small body, bending it to his will. The brocade dressing-gown had slipped off one shoulder, and she shuddered with pleasure as his lips explored the hollows at the base of her neck, circling over the nakedness revealed beneath. With a harsh exclamation he pulled the gown right open, trailing sensual fingers from the tips of her breasts down over her tautening stomach to the intimate V of her legs.
At once she heard an inner warning, but his touch was so masterful that her doubts were overcome by the clamouring voices of desire. 'Lucas!' she whispered, as if by uttering his name she could tell him everything that was in her heart. 'Oh, Lucas . . .'
A sudden hammering at the door shattered the silence, making Lucas jerk his head up with a muffled curse. 'Who the hell . . .?' The sound came again, even more insistently. 'I'll have to go,' he groaned. 'They'll have seen the Land Rover in the drive. They'll know I'm here.'
Despite the hammering at the door, he slid his hands slowly and sensually back over her naked body till he held her face between them, then he bent to give her one last hot kiss on the lips before pulling the rug tightly around her, as if protecting a precious object from view. 'I won't be long.'
He swivelled out and she heard voices at the front door. Wonderingly, she touched her burning lips, feeling even now the afterglow of his touch on her silky skin, and marvelling at the ease with which he had overcome her resistance. But the respite gave her a chance to come back to earth, and she was shocked to think how easily she had submitted. Events were leading in only one direction, and but for the interruption she would probably be in his bed by now. He had taken complete possession of her mind and body. It could only confirm the impression he already had of her.
Angrily she fumbled for the belt of the dressing-gown and tied it in a tight knot, then, obeying his orders now it was too late, pulled the tartan rug over her shoulders, concealing every scrap of tan flesh from view. She went to sit in one of the wooden armchairs by the kitchen table, every nerve alert for the battle of wills that would start the minute he came back.
There was a sound of the front door slamming and footsteps over the wooden floor. The kitchen door swung open.
'I have to go out. Keep yourself warm. And if I'm not back soon, get yourself something to eat.' He indicated the fridge. 'Plenty in there. But look around. OK?'
'Go out?' she demanded, but he had already gone back into the hall. She heard him banging about in one of the cupboards, and when he returned he had on his waterproof jacket and a gun over one arm.
'Lucas!' she exclaimed.
He grinned at her surprise. 'You're in the country now, darling. There's a dog worrying our sheep up at Waudby Rig. Let's hope I won't be long.' With that he came over to her, and before she could move he bent down and, with the gun crooked over one arm, dragged her face up to his with the other and gave her a searing kiss on the lips. Her whole body screamed out for him, despite her intentions to resist, and his answered hers before he tore himself away with a sudden drawn expression on his face and a growl of regret.
He left without saying anything.
After the door closed behind him, Goldie put her head in her hands. It wasn't safe to stay. She couldn't handle this. He was too much. Everything he had said recently showed that she would only be a quick fling as far as he was concerned. And she wanted more than that. It would be all or nothing for her.
When she was sure he had gone, she got up quickly and took off the rug and the dressing-gown, going over to the Aga and taking down her still damp clothes and slipping into them with a shudder of displeasure. Folding up the things he had lent her, she went into the hall and donned her waterproof and boots. There was no sign of the parcel with her old clothes in it, and she wondered if he had left it behind after all. Still, it could wait. The important thing was to get away before he came back.
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