in0

by Unknown

  Matthew's mouth was grim, but his emotions were still in command. Lunging forward, he grasped her wrist, and before she could formulate any resistance he had hauled her unceremoniously towards him. Her breasts, loose beneath the thin silk of her shirt, were crushed against his chest, and her legs bumped against his thighs. His breath was hot on her forehead as he wound the arm he had hold of behind her back, and, apparently uncaring that he might be hurting her, he trapped her effectively against him.

  'You don't think before you speak, do you?' he snarled, glaring down at her. 'You never would listen to reason. You wouldn't even give me a hearing, before you ran away to London --------------------- '

  'I didn't run away,' she got out painfully, but he obviously didn't believe her.

  'I used to come and sit outside that apartment you took in Penrith, did you know that? Waiting for you to come out. But you never did, did you? At least, not while I was there. You were too scared to meet me face to face. Too scared to even pick up the telephone!'

  'I wasn't scared,' she protested, wondering if he was aware that he was almost breaking her arm. Dear God, if he didn't let her go soon she was going to faint, and she had no wish to give him that satisfaction.

  'What would you call it then?' he demanded now, and she took a gulping breath.

  'How about—disgusted?' she choked, dredging up the last of her strength. 'Tell me, how long had it been going on before I found out? Barbara was already three months pregnant when I went away, which means that it has to have been

  '

  Her release was as sudden as her capture had been. One moment Matthew was holding her in a biting embrace, and the next he had uttered a savage interjection and let her go. So unexpectedly, indeed, that she was forced to clutch at him to save herself from falling off the jetty. Her fingers clawed desperately at his chest, tearing open the buttons of his shirt and finding purchase on the cloth. And, in so doing, the backs of her fingers came into contact with the warm skin of his midriff. But as soon as she felt his flesh against hers she dragged her hand away.

  'What did you say?'

  The violence of Matthew's tone was a welcome distraction to the wilful madness of her thoughts. Even though her shoulder was still stinging, as blood surged back into the tortured muscles, the sensuality of his warm body was a potent attraction. For- a moment—for a heart-wrenching moment—she had known an almost uncontrollable impulse to go on touching him, and all the pain and anguish that lay between them had melted in the heat of that temptation. But it was only a physical aberration, she knew, born of her own frustrated emotions. And of her instinctive response to Matthew's sexuality...

  'What did you say?'

  She came to her senses a second time to find him staring at her with raw impatience. Evidently, he had repeated his question, and she had to blink away a certain incoherence as she struggled to remember what he meant.

  'I—don't—know ----'

  'Barbara!' Matthew prompted grimly. 'You said Barbara was pregnant when you went away. Who told you that?'

  Rachel blinked again. 'What do you mean? Who told me? It was a fact, wasn't it? What does it matter who

  ?'

  'Because it wasn't true,' said Matthew savagely.

  'Don't be stupid ---- '

  'Don't you dare tell me not to be stupid!' he retorted angrily. 'For heaven's sake, Rachel, Barbara wasn't pregnant when you went away! Rosemary was born almost a year after the divorce! I want to know who told you Barbara was pregnant. Was it Barbara? God, I have to know the truth!'

  Rachel backed away from him along the jetty, trying desperately to come to terms with what she had heard. 'But—Rosemary's ten years old,' she protested unsteadily, but Matthew shook his head.

  'She's nine!' he told her flatly. 'Ask her how old she is, and she'll tell you.'

  Rachel swallowed. 'Why should I believe you?'

  'Don't be ridiculous! What would be the point of lying? You could easily find out when Rosemary was born. The records are there for everyone to see.'

  Rachel put a trembling hand to her temple. 'But you did—you did—sleep with her, didn't you?' she got out unsteadily.

  Matthew's nostrils flared. 'Yes.'

  Rachel caught her breath. 'Oh, God!'

  Matthew's mouth twisted. 'Don't you want to know when? Or

  whyV

  Rachel shook her head. 'No --- '

  'Well, by God, you're going to,' declared Matthew harshly, going after her. 'And if you run away this time, I'll go straight to your aunt and uncle and tell them how Barbara lied to get what she wanted.'

  Rachel, who had reached the path that led up through a copse of trees, budding now with blossom, halted uncertainly. Then, even though all she really wanted to do was escape to the unguarded sanctuary of her room, she turned back.

  'It—wasn't Barbara,' she admitted painfully. 'I—Aunt Maggie told me that Barbara was pregnant.'

  'Good God!' Matthew made a sound that was a mixture of anger and anguish. 'And you believed her?'

  'Why shouldn't I?' retorted Rachel swiftly. 'By your own admission, you and Barbara had been having an affair

  '

  'Not an affair!' Matthew shrugged off his jacket and thrust it roughly over his shoulder. 'Rachel, believe it or not, that night you—you found us, as you put it, was the first time we had ever—touched.'

  'Oh, Matt, please --- '

  'Goddammit, it's the truth!' he swore angrily. 'And you had only yourself to blame! Or you would have, if you could see further than that selfish bloody nose of yours!'

  'How dare you?'

  'I dare, because it's the truth,' he stated. 'All right. You didn't want to have a baby. I was coming to terms with that

  '

  'Were you?'

  'All right, I had my faults, too, but I was never deceitful

  '

  'Oh, Matt!'

  'Never deceitful with you.'

  Rachel shook her head. 'I don't know what you mean.'

  'I think you do.'

  'No, I don't.'

  'All right,' he said again. 'When—when we had that first row, and I flushed the pills you were taking down the toilet, I thought you'd at least have told me if you'd started taking them again.'

  Rachel stared at him uncomprehendingly. 'Yes. I would have.'

  'But you didn't, did you?'

  'Didn't what?'

  'Tell me, dammit! You let me go on hoping that you might get pregnant, when all the time you were popping pills like there was no tomorrow!'

  'That's not true!'

  'It is true.'

  Rachel caught her breath. 'It's not! I'm telling you now, I've never—I've never taken a contraceptive pill since—since you disposed of them.'

  Matthew studied her grimly. 'Wait a minute. Let me backtrack a minute. Are you saying you've never knowingly tried to prevent a pregnancy since I destroyed your prescription?'

  'That's right.' Rachel was trembling. If he only knew, she thought achingly, thinking of that still little body that had been taken from her...

  'And—Maggie told you Barbara was pregnant?'

  Rachel bent her head. 'Yes.'

  'God!' Matthew rammed the heel of his hand hard against his forehead. 'So we both believed what we were told.'

  Rachel licked her lips before looking up at him again. 'Not entirely,' she said unevenly. 'Don't forget, I had the evidence of my own eyes.'

  'And so did I,' muttered Matthew savagely, scuffing his booted foot against the wooden piles of the jetty. 'That night you found us together, Barbara had shown me a half-used strip of contraceptive pills. She took them out of the drawer beside your bed.'

  Rachel's lips parted. 'But—they weren't mine!'

  'I didn't know that.'

  Rachel stared at him in horror. 'But why didn't you ask me?'

  'I was going to,' he declared bitterly. 'Only, if you remember, I never got the chance.'

  Rachel tried to think. 'But when I found you - ' 'I was stoned out of my mind!' ex
claimed Matthew wearily. 'I don't know how much I drank that night. I don't remember too much of the night at all, after Barbara's revelation.' He expelled a heavy breath. 'I remember her saying what a pity it was that you seemed to care more about your career than me. I remember that. And I remember her mentioning that as long as you were taking the Pill you weren't likely to conceive, and I also remember arguing with her about it.'

  'Oh, Matt.'

  He frowned. 'Anyway, 1 know earlier in the evening we went upstairs to look in the drawer of the bedside cabinet, and the foil strip was there.'

  'But she could have put it there at any time,' cried Rachel.

  'I'm beginning to realise that now, but then - '

  'You got drunk?'

  'I suppose so. We went back to the library, and I remember my glass always seeming to be full, and Barbara sympathising with me, and smiling at me, and telling me how she would never do such a thing.'

  Rachel felt sick. Even after all this time, his words still had the power to distress her.

  'And when I came home?'

  'I don't know.' He raked his hair back with a hand that was not quite steady. 'I suppose she must have suggested that I ought to be in bed and offered to help me undress.'

  'Do you mean ----- ?' Rachel could hardly say the words. 'Do you mean you hadn't slept together before I found you?'

  'I don't think so.'

  'You don't think so?'

  'All right, then, no. We hadn't.' He shook his head. 'I doubt if I was capable of it.'

  'That's some consolation, I suppose.' Rachel was bitter.

  'Well, goddammit, if I had I'd have considered myself justified!'

  he replied unevenly. 'Rachel, I've never loved anyone as I loved you, and when I found out— thought I'd found out—that you'd been cheating on me '

  'You let Barbara offer you consolation!'

  'Not until after you left,' Matthew countered harshly, and Rachel shivered.

  'Left Rothmere?'

  'Left Penrith,' corrected Matthew, with a scowl. 'That's how I know Barbara couldn't have been pregnant when you went away. But the night you went to London I decided I had nothing left to lose.'

  'But why Barbara? Did you—did you love her?'

  'Not love, no. I was grateful to her, I suppose, for exposing your duplicity, or what I thought was your duplicity, anyway.

  And she was there. And, dammit, I wanted to hurt you as you had hurt me!'

  'Oh, Matt!'

  'So now you know,' he muttered, coming closer to her. 'Does it make a difference?'

  Rachel couldn't take it all in. She couldn't believe that everything that had happened could have pivoted on a lie—two lies, if she accepted that Barbara had tricked Matthew with what must have been her own contraceptive pills.

  She looked up at Matthew, and her heart bled. Was it true?

  Had he really believed she had been lying to him? And why not, when she had been equally as eager to believe that he was having an affair with her cousin?

  'Rachel...'

  He put out his hand towards her, but she avoided his touch.

  However much she wanted to believe him, she had to have a little time to assimilate all she had learned, and what it might mean. And first of all she wanted to speak to Aunt Maggie. If what Matthew had said was true, then she had an awful lot to answer for.

  'What's wrong?' he demanded now, his frustration plain, and her heart went out to him.

  'Just—give me a little time to get used to the idea,' she begged, and, unable to resist the temptation, she put her hand on his sleeve. The flesh beneath the fine silk was taut and pulsing with life, and she knew an urge to bend her head and brush her lips against his warm skin.

  'God—Rachel!' he groaned, as aware as she was of the chemistry between them, but the remembrance of Barbara, and what she had done to both of them, was a compelling deterrent.

  'Look,' he added harshly, 'you

  know I don't have a lot of time. I'm leaving in ' he cast a swift look at his watch '—about half an hour. I wish I could postpone the trip now, but perhaps it's a blessing in disguise. By the time I get back, you'll have had time to decide what you want to do. At least promise me you'll stay until I get back. I need your assurance that you won't run out on me again.'

  Rachel moistened her lips. 'All right.'

  Matthew expelled a heavy sigh. 'You mean that?'

  'Yes.' Rachel looked down at her hand on his sleeve, and then, throwing caution to the wind, she leant forward and kissed his cheek. 'Have a good journey,' she whispered. 'Take care.'

  It was late in the afternoon when Rachel arrived at the vicarage.

  It had been difficult to get away from Rothmere without attracting undue attention, and she would have preferred no one to know where she was going. As it was, she had had to prevail on the old butler's kindness to enable her to borrow one of the estate's vehicles, but at least the mud-spattered Land Rover he had provided had not aroused the curiosity Matthew's Range Rover might have done.

  In spite of the extreme tension she was feeling, driving again had not been a hazard. Indeed, she was amazed at her own resilience, after the body-blow of Matthew's revelations. She suspected the shock of what she had learned hadn't really hit her yet, and that the courage it was taking to come and confront her aunt was being sustained by the artificial amount of adrenalin in her system; but it had to be done. There was no way she could dismiss what Matthew had told her and look only to the future.

  If they were to have any future at all, she had to dispose of the skeletons of the past, and unless she saw Aunt Maggie face to face she would never know the truth.

  Her aunt was in the sitting-room. Too late, Rachel remembered that the Young Wives had their regular weekly meeting at the vicarage on Friday afternoons, and the sound of perhaps a dozen female voices jarred her determination. But, after making no attempt to disguise her entry into the house, she was obliged to show her face, and she steeled herself against the stares that accompanied her appearance.

  'Why—Rachel!' Her aunt's tone was at once surprised and wary. 'You should have let us know you were coming.'

  'Yes.' But Rachel knew that was the last thing she would have done. She had wanted to catch her aunt unawares, and unprepared, but now the older woman was having plenty of time to consider why her niece had appeared.

  'Why don't you sit down and join us?' Aunt Maggie invited, struggling to behave as the vicar's wife should. 'Girls, you all know my niece, Rachel Barnes, don't you? She came for dear Barbara's funeral, and, unfortunately, she had an accident while she was playing with Rosemary.'

  That was hardly accurate, but Rachel was relieved not to have to go into further details. She acknowledged the ripple of restrained sympathy—some of it from girls she and Barbara used to go to school with—with polite gratitude, and then, excusing herself from the gathering, she offered to make some tea.

  'That won't be necessary,' said her aunt swiftly, nodding at the cups on the table in front of them. 'We've had tea, haven't we, girls? I'm sure we'd all prefer to hear about the exciting job you have in London, instead. Rachel's an assistant producer, aren't you, dear? Very career-minded, our Rachel. Always was.'

  She met her niece's eyes. 'Always will be.'

  'I wouldn't bank on that, if I were you,' said Rachel, equally as smoothly, and she saw her aunt's jaw sag for a moment.

  But the aberration was brief, and Maggie quickly recovered.

  'Well, I'm sure you know your own business best,' she remarked evenly. 'But it's a pity we can't all be as happy as Barbara and Matthew used to be. Poor Barbara! I don't know how Matt's going to manage without her. He's been totally devastated since she died.'

  There was another murmur of sympathy from the women gathered in the room, and Rachel felt her nails digging painfully into her palms. With a few words, her aunt had altered the whole atmosphere of the meeting, and there was no doubt at all that the change had been deliberate.

  However, not all the women pres
ent had regarded Barbara as the saint her mother was implying she had been, and one of them, Gillian Wyatt, got abruptly to her feet.

  'I think it's time we were leaving,' she said, breaking up the meeting. 'It's obvious that Rachel would like to speak to her aunt alone, and it is nearly four o'clock. Time we were getting home and making ourselves useful to our husbands.'

  'Oh, but I'm sure Rachel --- ' began Maggie urgently, but already two or three of the others were on their feet.

  'Gill's right,' said Nancy Cullen, buttoning her cardigan. 'I know you're too polite to ask us to leave, but I'm sure you'd like to have a quiet word with your visitor. After all, it's been too long since Rachel visited the valley. We should see you more often, Rachel. It's not that far from London to Rothside.'

  Rachel was quite touched by the way so many of the women took it upon themselves to wish her well as they were leaving.

  She had thought she would be regarded as the pariah in their midst, but it seemed that in this respect also she had been wrong.

  No one appeared to blame her for what had happened, or, if they did, they were prepared to keep their thoughts to themselves.

  But when she and her aunt were alone she met an entirely different reaction. Maggie was grim and aggressive, and obviously of the opinion that the best method of defence was attack.

  'Well?' she said, coming back into the sitting-room, where Rachel had been waiting while she said goodbye to her guests.

  'What do you want? I hope you're not going to ask me if you can stay.'

  'I'm not.' Rachel pushed her hands into the pockets of her jeans, and endeavoured to take control of the conversation. 'As a matter of fact, I don't want anything from you but some answers.

  Like, for instance, why you told me Barbara was pregnant when she wasn't.'

  Maggie's thin face blanched. 'I beg your pardon?'

  'You heard what I said, Aunt Maggie. Why did you tell me Barbara was pregnant --------- ?'

  'What are you talking about?' The older woman was blustering now. 'Why did I tell you Barbara was pregnant? I told you because she was pregnant, that's why. She and Matt—well, you know as well as I do what happened

  '

  'I know what you told me happened,' retorted Rachel harshly, and Maggie took a step back.