Impetuous Masquerade

by Anne Mather

  They seemed to drive for a long time after leaving the main highway, and she decided Jared must be taking a circular route. They appeared to be crossing a vast expanse of open land, although Rhia could see little beyond the car’s windows, and in consequence could only guess what lay ahead. But eventually, lights appeared ahead of them, and Jared stopped so that Troy could get out and open up a wide-railed gate for them to pass through.

  They drove past sheds and stables, a long building, which Jared indicated was the bunkhouse, and finally braked to a stop below a sprawling half-timbered building, that seemed to spread over an enormous area.

  ‘Welcome to Moose Falls,’ said Glyn, squeezing her hand, as Rhia gazed in amazement at the ranch-house. ‘What do you think? It’s some place, isn’t it?’

  * * *

  An hour later, Rhia felt more equipped to agree with him. Standing in the huge apartment that had been provided for her use during her stay, she felt a helpless sense of wonderment at the beauty of her surroundings. Whatever she had imagined, whatever luxuries she had dreamed of, nothing had prepared her for the simple elegance of Glyn’s home, or the sense of spacious living its uncluttered rooms compounded.

  And it was its sheer size that had impressed her first: its huge hall with a deliciously-smelling pine log fire glowing in the massive grate, which Glyn told her was used for parties; the curving oak staircase, leading to the upper floor, its polished balustrade gleaming; and the high, wide corridors, carpeted in a richly-patterned cream carpet, that seemed big enough to mount a rugby scrum. Everything was on the large scale—from the handful of sofas needed to furnish the hall, to the great rectangular window that almost filled the wall of the first landing, its long velvet curtain gleaming regally in the light from a dozen different lamps.

  They had been met by a tall thin woman, with iron-grey hair, whom Jared addressed as Maria. Her features were dark and sharply defined, and from her appearance, Rhia judged her to have Indian blood in her veins. However, her expression was open and friendly, and she greeted Glyn with genuine affection, even if she reserved her warmest welcome for Jared.

  ‘You’re late,’ she said. ‘I was beginning to get worried. A man wasn’t intended to fly back and forth across the ocean, like a hawk that can’t decide which side of the mountain to build its nest.’

  Jared, much to Lisa’s evident chagrin, enfolded the elderly woman in his arms and hugged her. ‘Man won’t fly in steel bird again for many moons, Maria,’ he teased, his anger dispersing briefly, and the Indian woman had chuckled goodnaturedly at his deliberate mockery.

  ‘That’s just as well for all of us,’ she declared, as he drew away from her. ‘Tepee need chief to keep tribe in order.’

  Jared had sighed then, glancing round at the rest of them as he pushed back his hair with a weary hand. ‘Yes,’ he said. ‘Where is he?’

  ‘The usual place.’

  Maria’s reply had been laconic, but when Jared started across the hall, Lisa had remonstrated with him. ‘Jared, don’t go!’ she protested. ‘I—Glyn’s just got home. At least let’s have dinner together, before you go looking for that disreputable old man!’

  ‘It’s all right, Jared. You go.’ Glyn’s words came swiftly on the heels of his mother’s, and he left the couch where he had been sitting to grope his way across the room. ‘I’m okay—see? I just need a bit of practice. You go find Pa. Mom and I will look after Val.’

  And after a moment’s hesitation, Jared had left them, disappearing down the passage that led to the back of the building, leaving Lisa to stare after him with angry sparkling eyes.

  Surprisingly, it was Maria who had taken matters in hand, directing Lisa to look after Glyn, while she showed Rhia to her room. Glyn had objected, but to no avail, and Rhia had found herself accompanying the Indian woman up the curving staircase, followed by the boy Troy, carrying her cases.

  Her rooms were entered through double panelled doors, the wood dark and heavy, and gleaming with the patina of age. Beyond lay a sitting room and bedroom carpeted in a soft melon-coloured pile, with drapes and bed-coverings of maple-brown velvet. The sitting room contained chairs and tables grouped together, and deliciously scented by the logs glowing in another open hearth, while through a wide archway, the bedroom revealed a massive four-poster bed, with a matching chest and fitted walk-in closets. The walls were plain, but hung with woven rugs and primitive paintings depicting the old West, their vivid colours adding warmth and beauty to the rooms. There was a bathroom, of course, but Rhia did not discover this until after Maria had left her with the information that supper would be served in a little over an hour.

  ‘Don’t bother dressing up, if you were planning to,’ she added, pausing in the doorway. ‘We don’t stand on ceremony at Moose Falls. Not lessen someone’s coming special.’ She smiled. ‘From the way Glyn behaves, I’d guess he’d say you were someone special, but you know what I mean.’

  Rhia managed a weak smile in reply, but after Maria had left her, she breathed a sigh of unease. Apparently Maria hadn’t been told of her real identity, and she felt the weight of the responsibility she was carrying bearing down on her.

  The bathroom, predictably, was enormous, too. Tiled in toning shades of cream and yellow, it offered a deep, step-in bath and shower, as well as the usual fittings. Deciding a bath was just what she needed to remove the lingering sense of apprehension she was feeling, Rhia turned on the taps, and while the bath was filling, opened her suitcases. She took out the most crushable items, and hung them on hangers in the huge closets provided for the purpose, and then took off the navy skirt suit she had worn to travel in and wrapped her pink towelling bathrobe about her.

  The bath was delightful, but in spite of her assertion that she could not be tired, she was, and after she had soaped her body thoroughly, she couldn’t resist the temptation to close her eyes for a moment.

  She awakened to what sounded like a thunderous knocking at the bathroom door, and her lids lifted sleepily to the awareness that the water was almost cold.

  ‘Rhia! For God’s sake, are you all right? Answer me, damn you!’

  Rhia blinked rapidly, and scrambled up in the bath, reaching for her bathrobe. Jared! her brain registered clumsily. What was Jared doing in her room? And what a blessing she had locked the bathroom door.

  ‘Rhia—’

  ‘All right, all right, I’m coming!’

  Finding her voice, Rhia wrapped the bathrobe closely about her chilled body, and turned the handle that automatically released the lock. Then she opened the door apprehensively, to find Jared standing outside, glaring down at her with scarcely concealed fury.

  ‘What the hell have you been doing?’ he snarled, before she could say anything. ‘Do you realise how long you’ve been up here?’

  ‘I—I think so.’ Rhia swallowed a little convulsively, noticing almost inconsequently that he had showered and changed, and how well his shirt of dark red silk suited his sombre colouring. ‘I—I was just taking a bath—’

  ‘Like hell you were!’ snapped Jared savagely. ‘It’s nearly ten o’clock. Supper was ready soon after nine!’

  ‘Oh—I’m sorry—’ Rhia moved her head back and forward in dismay. ‘I—I must have fallen asleep—’

  ‘Asleep! You mean—in the bath?’ And at her timid nod of assent, Jared’s hard hands were suddenly biting into her shoulders. ‘Are you crazy? You could have drowned in there!’

  ‘But I didn’t.’ Rhia struggled to free herself without much success. ‘Jared, I think you’ve made your point, don’t you?’ She was intensely aware of his nearness and of how vulnerable she felt, naked beneath the loosely-tied folds of her bathrobe. ‘I—I’m sorry if I’ve inconvenienced you, but I didn’t mean to fall asleep. I—I just did.’ She looked beyond him towards the archway that led into her sitting room. ‘Ought—ought you to be in here? I mean, if—if anyone came in—’

  ‘And found us?’ His mouth twisted. ‘Is that what you mean? Glyn, for instance,’ he added
, regarding her with dark resentful eyes, and Rhia wondered what had happened to arouse him so.

  ‘Well—yes,’ she conceded, deciding it might be safer to remind him of his responsibilities, but Jared was not listening to her.

  ‘Why did you do it?’ he asked unexpectedly, his hands flexing and unflexing against her tender flesh, and when she gazed up at him with wide anxious eyes, he went on: ‘Why did you change your mind? About coming back with us? I was sure nothing would persuade you.’

  Rhia quivered. ‘Does—does it matter? I’m here now—’

  ‘I want you to tell me,’ Jared persisted, his voice softer now, but no less insistent, his breath filling her nostrils as he bent towards her, warm and moist, and fragrant with the scent of alcohol.

  Rhia’s pulses raced, but common sense and reason warred within her. This was getting out of hand, she thought unsteadily, realising he would likely regret his behaviour in the morning, and twisting her head away from him, she said accusingly:

  ‘You’ve been drinking—I can smell it on your breath. I—I think you’d better go—’

  ‘Not until you tell me.’ Jared’s hand curved round her nape, dislodging the loose knot in which she had confined her hair while she took her bath, and allowing it to tumble down around her shoulders. It added to her feeling of vulnerability, and she felt a rising sense of panic as he threaded his fingers through it.

  ‘Jared—’

  ‘I’m not drunk,’ he told her huskily. ‘I’ve only swallowed a little fire-water. Not a lot, compared to the state my father was in when I found him,’ he added bitterly.

  ‘Your father?’ Rhia strove to keep her head. ‘Mr—Frazer?’

  ‘My father. Mr Frazer,’ he agreed harshly. ‘He had—as we say over here—tied one on, if you know what I mean.’

  ‘He—he was—drunk?’

  ‘High as a kite,’ Jared confirmed grimly, and Rhia thought she understood why her actions had proved so inflammatory. After a scene with his father, her behaviour must have been the last straw.

  ‘I’m sorry—’

  ‘Why should you be sorry?’

  ‘Well, because it’s—upset you,’ she ventured uneasily, resisting when he would have drawn her closer.

  ‘Why should it upset me?’ he demanded, allowing his hands to slide down, over her shoulders and her upper arms until they reached her waist. ‘Rhia, my father’s an alcoholic—you might as well know it. You’ll find out soon enough.’

  ‘Oh, no!’ Rhia gazed at him with wide sympathetic eyes, forgetting her own fears for the moment. ‘I am sorry, Jared, truly. And that’s why you’re so—so angry.’

  ‘Angry?’ Jared’s echo of her question was full of derision, though whether for himself or her she couldn’t decide. ‘You know why I’m angry, Rhia. God, I’ve been sitting downstairs for nearly an hour, swallowing scotch, and listening to Lisa and Maria mouth platitudes about how tired you must be, and that we should have supper without you, because you’re obviously not going to join us.’ His mouth set in a grim line. ‘Angry! Of course I’m angry. But only because you’ve behaved so bloodly recklessly!’

  Rhia gasped. ‘What gives you the right to say that to me?’

  ‘This—’ he muttered vehemently, and overcoming her futile resistance, he covered her mouth with his.

  With her lips parted in protest, she had no chance to evade the searching intimacy of his kiss. His hand at her nape, tangled in the silken curtain of her hair, allowed no escape from the hungry exploration of ers mouth, and her overheated senses did the rest. Her mouth opened to his, permitted his urgent assault, and unknowingly invited a deeper consummation. Coherent thought ceased at the moment she stopped fighting him, at the moment her fingers uncurled and spread against the soft fabric of his shirt, feeling, even through the cloth, the taut muscles with their overlying sprinkling of coarse dark hair.

  ‘Rhia—’ His groan of protest was nevertheless accompanied by his fingers, probing the loose neckline of her robe, and finding the swollen nipple beneath. His mouth trailed fire across her cheek to the curve of her neck, while his hand cupped her breast’s fullness, and stroked the roseate peak to a quivering frenzy.

  Rhia had never experienced anything like this before, and innocence kept her moulded to him when experience would have warned her to draw away. As it was, his knee probing between her legs loosened the cord of her bathrobe, and his hands slid beneath the gown to bring her fully against him.

  ‘Jared—’ she breathed, mindlessly seeking his mouth with her own, then froze into horrified immobility when another voice spoke from the sitting room.

  ‘Val? Val, where are you?’

  It was Glyn, and the youthful tenor of his tones brought Jared abruptly to his senses. With an expression of anguish crossing his dark face, he thrust himself away from her, dragging the sides of her gown together, across her lissom sensuous body. Then, he turned in the direction of Glyn’s voice, and gesturing grimly for Rhia to go back into the bathroom, he strolled towards the archway saying:

  ‘She’s taking a bath, Glyn. I’ve just alerted her to the fact that we’re waiting for her. She must have fallen asleep.’

  Rhia gazed resentfully at Jared, stung by the cool indifference of his tone. She couldn’t believe that only moments before he had been caressing her body with unguarded passion, ravishing her mouth with his, and allowing her to feel the pulsating heat of his loins. It was as if it had never happened, as if by pushing her out of the bedroom he could push what had happened out of his mind.

  For several seconds she just stood there, appalled by his callous behaviour, and when he turned and saw her, a swift spasm of emotion crossed his face.

  ‘Go!’ he mouthed, and even as he did so, Glyn’s stumbling gait brought him to the open archway.

  ‘Jared?’ he exclaimed, and now his voice was sharp with accusation. ‘What are you doing in here? I thought you were putting Pa to bed.’

  ‘I was. I did!’ Rhia told herself she was glad he was being disconcerted, even while she hovered by the bathroom door, half afraid even now that Glyn could see her. ‘Anyway, it was just as well I came in,’ Jared went on, dragging his gaze from Rhia and moving towards his nephew. ‘She’d fallen asleep. She might have drowned if I hadn’t disturbed her.’

  ‘God!’ Glyn turned quite pale. ‘Is she all right?’

  ‘Yes—apparently.’ Jared cast another taut look in Rhia’s direction, as if daring her to contradict him. ‘Come on, Glyn, let’s leave her to it. She says she’ll be down shortly.’

  Rhia’s lips parted indignantly, but Jared was already guiding Glyn across the sitting room, and presently she heard the sound of the heavy doors closing.

  * * *

  In spite of what had happened, Rhia did sleep soundly when she finally got to bed. Weariness, and the uneasy knowledge that she should not have come here, both served to help her seek respite in oblivion, and the wide bed was so comfortable, she lost consciousness at once.

  But morning brought remembrance, and not least, the remembrance of supper the previous evening. It had not been a comfortable meal. They had each seemed absorbed with their own thoughts, and Rhia hadn’t been able to prevent the unwilling awareness that so far as Jared was concerned, she might not have existed.

  They had eaten in a magnificent dining room, with a long oval table, and finely-polished carver chairs. Apart from the chairs and the table, there was a heavily carved sideboard, and in the window, an iron-bound chest, set with a huge copper bowl of hothouse lilies. Their cream and amber tongues blended smoothly with the lightly panelled walls, the light reflecting in the copper bowl providing a vivid flash of fire.

  When the meal was over, Rhia had been eager to escape to the comparative sanctuary of her rooms, but this time Glyn had detained her, capturing her hand as she bade her goodnights, and forcing her to remain with him after the others had left the room.

  ‘I haven’t had a chance to be alone with you today,’ he exclaimed, pulling her closer, and
Rhia wished she had had the foresight to wear the offensive wig. ‘When are we going to get together, Val? Really get together, I mean? Does my blindness offend you? Is that what it is?’ he demanded bitterly. ‘Or do you find Jared a more attractive combination? I should warn you, my mother would never stand for that!’

  ‘Oh, don’t be silly, Glyn.’ The words had tumbled anxiously from Rhia’s lips. ‘I—I don’t know what you’re talking about. You—you’ve been ill. You’re still far from strong, and you know it. Why you—you should really have gone straight to bed this evening, instead of draining your strength like this—’

  ‘I’m not ill, Val,’ he insisted, brushing her cheek with disturbing lips. ‘I may be a little weak, but I’ll get over that. What I may not get over is this accursed lack of sight!’

  ‘Of course you will.’ Rhia had to reassure him, touching his face with reluctant compassion. ‘Glyn—my dear, just be a little more patient, that’s all. Give yourself time.’

  Glyn expelled his breath resignedly. ‘And you—how much time will you give me?’ he persisted, and Rhia sighed.

  ‘Don’t talk like that,’ she begged him weakly. ‘Come on, let’s go to bed. I—I—things will look different in the morning.’

  ‘They won’t look different to me,’ exclaimed Glyn harshly. ‘Val, day and night—they’re meaningless. So far as I’m concerned, it’s permanently black—black—black!’

  ‘Oh, Glyn!’ Pity overcame discretion, and with a sound of protest she lifted her face and pressed her lips to his. ‘Glyn,’ she breathed, as his arms closed convulsively round her. ‘Glyn, don’t lose faith.’

  Over Glyn’s shoulder she saw Jared standing in the doorway, watching them, and wondered how long he had been there and what he had heard. As she endeavoured to draw back from Glyn’s resisting arms, however, Jared spoke, and it was this as much as anything that forced Glyn to set her free.

  ‘Come on, old man,’ he said. ‘I’ll help you up to your room,’ and Glyn turned on him angrily.