Perilous Refuge

by Patricia Wilson

  'That step didn't used to be here.' Only as she said it did she realise how odd it sounded.

  'Didn't used to be here? You know this house?'

  'No.' She shook her head impatiently, her impatience with herself. 'That was a stupid thing to say. What I meant was that this house is almost exactly like my own home, the one that Tina and I grew up in, and I've been so much back in the past that I thought ... I mean, I didn't expect …'

  He looked stunned, his grip on her tightening.

  'Are you telling me that I've done it again? You'll no doubt think it was deliberate. Maybe you imagine I'm some sort of professional torturer?'

  'I don't imagine anything of the sort,' Helen assured him quietly. 'I was lost in the past and I just didn't expect any changes at all. There never was this step at home. I was just remembering how my mother used to fill the hall with flowers and ...' Tears suddenly flooded her eyes. 'It was so safe, you see. I just stepped right back into it. It was all before ... You were right after all,' she choked, 'I am a child-daydreaming.'

  'I didn't mean that at all,' he said almost angrily, his hands tightening. 'When I said you were a child I meant your impossible innocence. It's almost unreal to think that Tansy belongs to you, that you've been married. I don't see anything of it in your face, no experience at all.'

  'It's there,' Helen said quietly, blinking the tears back and turning away. 'What you see is not innocence, it's coldness. I told you, I don't like men.'

  'I'm not men! I'm me' He swung her back, his hands on her shoulders, his angry insistence taking her by surprise. 'How the hell am I going to stop hurting you if you don't give me a clue? How many more traps am I going to walk into?'

  'None at all,' Helen managed coolly, his hands on her shoulders beginning to worry her badly, an uneasy excitement starting inside. It was quiet in the house, not a sound for miles and miles but their own voices, and he was angrily reproaching her for something that had been outside her control. 'Just leave me alone.'

  For a minute he looked down at her in wild frustration and then, without warning, he pulled her totally into his arms.

  'I'll leave you alone when I'm good and ready!' he grated, his arms tightened to a crushing grip, his grey eyes flickering with icy fire.

  Helen struggled then, a wave of panic washing through her, but he bent his dark head and caught her mouth with his before she could do more than make a small sound of protest and she seemed to be stung with fire. Faintness washed over her, panic mixing with a very forbidden pleasure that she had never felt before. She had a mental picture of Miles, his mouth hard and wet grinding into her, and she was fighting before she realised that this was not the same.

  Flames licked at her, taking her breath away, puzzled anxiety asking her odd questions. He was not in any way cruel but there was an insistence that demanded subjugation. He was the master, dominant, taming wild fears. His hand cupped her head, forcing her into closer acceptance of his mouth, his probing tongue between her lips bringing a spasmodic and wild reaction as it penetrated deeper.

  Dazed and shaking, she was completely subdued, incapable of any struggle now, her body guilty of an unfamiliar melting as he crushed her closer, his mouth languorous, moving against hers with complete mastery. She had never felt this before, this actual, physical ache, this inability to move, her body sleepily heavy with something she didn't understand. She had suffered the physical attention that Miles had forced on her but now she seemed to have given up all attempts to save herself, allowing Ross to ravage her mouth and force her into an intimate embrace that shocked her.

  Dimly she realised she was kissing him back, her arms tightly around his neck, an empty hunger in her that needed assuagement. For another second he let the hunger continue, fuelling it with lips that burned her, and then he made a low sound of protest, easing his mouth away slowly.

  When he lifted his head she stayed right where she was, trembling too much to move away, only upright because he held her so. His thumb probed her cheek, almost gently, the grey eyes brilliantly clear.

  'Please let me go.' Her eyes were no longer blue but deeply purple, locked with his.

  'Are you sure?'

  His voice held the edge of irony and his softly taunting attitude quickly dispelled the hazy cloud she had floated on, shame coming quickly to take its place.

  'I'm perfectly sure. I think I've had enough of your experiments, Mr Maclean!'

  'Don't be a fool, Helen!' he rasped, suddenly angered. 'If that was an experiment it was a very dangerous one in this empty house and you've got a very low opinion of yourself. I kissed you because it's the natural reaction when a very beautiful girl is in my arms and I stopped because my next natural reaction would have been to take things a good deal further.'

  'I didn't ask to be in your arms,' Helen hissed, anger rising to cover her growing feeling of shame at her own complicity and the entirely unacceptable feeling of loss now that his lips were not over hers.

  'No. You just fell into them,' he taunted softly. 'You don't look quite so full of hatred for the male of the species any more either.'

  'I learned the hard way to disguise my feelings,' Helen snapped, pulling free, shivers running over her.

  'Did you?' he mocked softly. 'You would be a credit to the acting profession. Your body language was explicit, you melted right into me, your lips opened like rose petals.'

  'You forced me!'

  'I held you,' he agreed, 'but there was no force, Helen, and you know it, even if you can't admit it. You wanted to be right where you were.' He suddenly smiled. 'It was the reaction of a completely innocent girl, one who has never known a lover.'

  'You think Tansy came from under a gooseberry bush?' Helen muttered turning her flushed face away, taking an uneven step to the door.

  'I'd rather not think about how Tansy came into being,' he grated, angry with such speed that she shuddered. 'Dwelling on that might just provoke me to murder.' He took her arm in a completely impersonal grip. 'Let's go!'

  'The experiment is over?' She turned at the open door of the house as he found the key and looked at him with what she hoped was distaste. He paused, his eyes steadily holding hers, not allowing her to look away now when she would have liked to.

  'Obviously,' he said quietly. 'To complete the experiment I would have had to take you to bed. The idea was beginning to drift to the top of my mind.'

  'Stop it! I hate the way you talk! I hate your damned assurance that you only have to crook a finger to get anything and anyone. Don't be so certain that there's so much difference between you and Miles Gilford either. You've both got the same soaring male ego. You even taste the same!'

  She was so angry, so afraid of her own reaction to him, so humiliated by his quiet taunting that she never thought of his reaction to such words. It was only when she saw violent rage staring at her through icy eyes that she stopped, her face red and angry, her hands shaking.

  'Just be thankful that you saved that until you were back in the cold air of the outside,' he said through clenched teeth, his eyes drilling into her like chips of ice. 'You like to live on the very edge of the world, don't you? Make the mistake of talking to me like that when we're alone indoors and you'll really learn how I taste and I won't have to ask you about your secrets, I'll know every one of them!'

  Helen turned and ran down the path but he was right behind her, grasping her wrist when she would have passed the car and run along the lane alone.

  'Let me go!' This time she fought wildly but he simply opened the door and bundled her inside.

  'No way. I'm not about to let that frozen little mind put me safely into a category. I don't leave women stranded. If you want to get away from me, Helen, all you have to do is resign.

  'And obviously I will.' She huddled in the comer, her face turned away. 'I can't stay at the office now, not after this.'

  'After what?' He started the car and backed out into the road, not even looking at her. 'Let's see. You have to resign because I kissed yo
u and you responded like a normal woman. Or is it because you felt the need to hit out at your own feminine response, to hide your feelings by saying unforgivable things to me?'

  'They weren't unforgivable,' Helen muttered heatedly, drowning in humiliation, hating him.

  'They must have been, because I don't forgive you.'

  'Then of course I'll resign.'

  'You're a free agent,' he said coldly. ' Do whatever you wish.'

  On the way home, Helen still trembled. She had been shocked out of her frozen state by kisses and hard, warm arms and her reaction had been wild, over the top, childish. It was that last that stung most of all. Any normal woman would have laughed and come back to the office with her grace and dignity intact. Instead Helen had huddled in the corner of the car like a child, hiding from both Ross and her own aching reaction to his kiss.

  Oh, what a mess! Why hadn't he simply left her alone?

  Did he have to try his skill on every woman he saw? He had even managed to make Tina into a dithering teenager when normally she was swift and competent, a mirror image of all Helen herself had been.

  She was afraid that her day's experience would show on her face, and she still felt dizzily adrift, not quite earthbound, as she walked slowly up the path to her own front door. It was wrenched open, Tina almost pulling her inside, and Helen's own problems were forgotten as she saw Tina's face white as a sheet and scared, so scared.

  'Tina! What is it? What's the matter? Tansy ... !'

  'No. She's fine: Tina looked at her for a minute and then pulled her towards the sitting-room. 'Come in here, Helen. I've put Tansy to bed ... She's perfectly all right but I had to get her up there out of the way. I promised I'd send you up later and she could come down but...'

  Tina ran a hand through her hair, her face frantic. 'I haven't made any dinner. We'll have to have beans on toast or something. I fed Tansy...'

  'Tina! Stop this nowl! Tell me what's wrong before I go mad.'

  Helen grabbed her sister's arms and gave her a little shake. To tell the truth her own legs were feeling weak because this was not Tina at all. Something had happened and it bad been bad. Anything less than awful would have had Tina in a rage, throwing plates.

  'He came,' Tina said in a whisper, sinking to the settee. 'Pig came. He wants Tansy.'

  'Miles? Miles was here?' Helen's voice was just an unbelieving croak and Tina looked up at her through eyes that she now saw had been weeping copiously.

  'He came just after lunch. Helen, where were you? I've been trying to get in touch with you all afternoon.'

  'I went out with Ross. He dropped me off at the bus on the way back.' While Ross had been holding her, kissing her, while she had been responding like a mindless fool, Miles had been here, getting Tina into this state. 'What do you mean, he wants Tansy?' she demanded, coming out of her trance of disbelief. 'He doesn't stand a chance. We were divorced even before Tansy was born. A couple more months and he wouldn't even have known she existed.'

  'He does know, though, Helen, and he wants her. He says he has as much right as you to her because he's her father. He says he's marrying again in a month's time and he'll be able to offer her a home better than this and a wife who doesn't have to go to work and leave her with a teenager. He's taking it to court as soon as he's married.'

  Helen sat down, her face as pale as Tina's. 'Did Tansy see him?'

  'No. He wanted to come in but I kept him at the door. It made him madder than ever but I wasn't letting him inside...'

  'Thank goodness!' Helen frowned, puzzled as well as scared. No court would hand Tansy over to a man who had never even seen her, father or not. 'He can't do it. He's bluffing, only trying to start trouble. How did he know where to find us anyway?' she suddenly asked.

  'The vicar's wife. Don't you remember she sent on some things for us, the things that were at the cleaner's?'

  Tina looked at her in miserable reproof and then burst into tears. 'Oh, Helen, why did you just go away quietly? Why didn't you fight for anything you could get, then this wouldn't be happening? The court would know how he treated you. It would all have come out. They wouldn't let Tansy go to such a violent person.'

  'They won't now,' Helen said through lips that were stiff with fear. 'He has no rights whatsoever.' Would they, though? Did he have rights? Uncertainty welled up inside, choking her.

  'They won't know now!' Tina sobbed. 'It's all too late. How will you fight this? How will you prove after all this time that he was a brute and frightened us so much? They'll ask why you didn't bring it to court, why you had an amicable divorce. That's what you allowed him to tell everyone, you were getting an amicable divorce.'

  It was true. In her anxiety to get away she would have agreed to anything. She had been afraid for Tina, for herself and for the baby not yet born. She had agreed to keep silent for a very speedy divorce. The court battle she had dreaded was now being forced on her.

  Suddenly, Helen couldn't sit still any more. She jumped up, pacing about. Did he have the right? The law was so strange, so convoluted, sometimes justice seemed to have very little to do with it. Miles was Tansy's father, wanting to offer her a home. He wouldn't win, she was sure of that, but to what extent would she lose? The very least they would do was give him equal visiting rights and how could she face that, knowing that Tansy was with someone as vile as Miles, even for one day? She might have to let her stay the night, a weekend even. In fact, he might win. She had no idea. Tansy would be in court, so would Tina. Everything she had fought to hide would be out in the open, sordid and cruel.

  She ran upstairs, creeping into Tansy's room, leaning over her. She was so precious, this sleeping child, her curly black hair against the white pillow. The thought of Miles even touching her at all sent waves of cold fear through Helen. She turned and went down the stairs, walking into the kitchen where Tina was making a tray of tea.

  'We'll leave. We'll move,' she said determinedly. 'He may be playing another cruel game but I'm not risking it. I'm not risking the law either. Tansy is not going to be taken into any courtroom and neither are you. Tomorrow we'll start planning our move and act on it.'

  'Suppose he comes while you're at work?' Tina asked, her face no less worried by Helen's announcement.

  'I'm not going anywhere,' Helen said bleakly. 'I'll have to resign in any case because we're leaving and going a long way off. I may as well resign now. Morning will do.'

  'What will Ross say?'

  'Who the hell cares?' Helen snapped. Wasn't Ross another man, another dominating man, another cruel man? Let him cope with Jeanette!

  They sat and talked until the early hours, both of them so anxious that they took it in turns to go and look at Tansy's sleeping form, the sight of her reassuring for a while. After only a few hours' sleep they were both up again, and at eight-thirty Helen shut herself in her bedroom and telephoned the office. It was Ross.

  'I'm leaving today,' Helen said with no preamble as soon as she heard his voice. 'I know it's not normal to just walk out but I can't give you any time at all. I have to leave as from this moment and I'll let you have a written resignation in today's post.'

  She put the phone down straight away, only just hearing his startled and angry exclamation as he rasped out her name, and then she pushed him out of her mind, trying to unscramble the thoughts she had brooded over during the long night. She had to sell this house without leaving a forwarding address. That could all be done through the solicitor, she was sure. They would need another house though right away and clearly it would have to be rented at first. Luckily there was a lot of rented property on the market at the moment and she only hoped that there would be an equal amount in the district they had decided upon.

  They had an old aunt in Reading, they would move there. It was a place they knew. Miles knew nothing about her aunt, though, and this time there would be no forwarding address left for anyone, vicar's wife or not. She began to walk round the house, to plan their move, and after a hasty breakfast of nothing more
than toast she started again. Tina was worn out this morning; tears and lack of sleep had turned her into something unrecognisable, and only determination kept Helen on her feet.

  It was half an hour later that the bell rang and Tina was instantly afraid.

  'It's him. He's come back!'

  Her attitude sent a wave of fear through Helen but she squashed it flat. Fear was contagious, like a disease. She was no longer afraid of Miles. She was going to fight for Tansy in any way she could and right now she would very much like to have the chance to kill Miles as he stood at the door.

  She stormed out and wrenched the door open, her furious eyes blinking in surprise when she found an equally furious face looking back at her as Ross stood on the step and glared.

  'What's all this resigning rubbish?' he grated. 'I've never heard such bloody nonsense in my life!'