by Penny Jordan
She knew she ought to have something to eat, but the thought of food nauseated her.
Outside it was still light, too early to go to bed. Besides, she wasn’t tired. In fact, she was far too keyed-up. It was a sensation she remembered vividly from her early days of knowing Silas, only now it came without the heady excitement she had known then: the tense excitement that all girls on the brink of love experience. Now there was just that tense, thrilling fear; that sense of sickening certainty that she loved a man without any hope of ever having her love returned.
She shivered and walked into the study where Silas had been working. What was it about him that made her feel like this? He was only a man, like any other; she was an attractive woman who had attracted her share of male interest over the years, but none of the other men she had met had ever made her feel like this.
His desk was untidy with papers; some of them had slipped on to the floor. She bent to pick them up, and as she did so she caught her arm painfully on the corner of an open drawer. Rubbing the tender place, she tried to shut the drawer, but something was jammed inside it.
Feeling carefully inside, she managed to dislodge the photograph frame that had been caught up against the back of the drawer.
She hadn’t meant to pry, but she had to remove it from the drawer to make it close, and her heart turned over as she saw her own eighteen-year-old reflection staring back at her through the glass.
All these years he had kept her photograph. The image blurred and trembled as tears burned her eyes. Kneeling on the floor beside the desk, she let them fall. She had once vowed she had wept enough tears for Silas and that she would weep no more.
But those tears hadn’t been for Silas, they had been selfish tears for herself, these were for Silas, and all that her teenage idiocy had cost them both.
How soon after she had left him had he gone to Ethiopia? Very carefully and slowly she put the photograph back. Then she got up slowly, without disturbing his papers.
It wouldn’t do for him to guess that she had found it.
It was late when she went to bed. She had deliberately dawdled, half hoping that Silas would wake up and come downstairs, and that they would talk as they had once done, with so much to say to one another that the hours flew by on silver wings. But of course he hadn’t done so, and even if they had…What was there for them to talk about now?
* * *
As a mother, Kate had learned long ago to sleep lightly, and so when she heard the sharp, anguished cry she was out of bed and by her bedroom door before she was even properly awake; instincts honed over the years of caring for Cherry carrying her to Silas’s bedside almost in her sleep.
It wasn’t until he cried out again that she realised what he had said, her whole body turning cold as he repeated her name in a raw, tormented voice of need.
He had thrown off the bedclothes, and the silver light from outside revealed a faint sheen of sweat on his skin.
As she bent over him, one hand smoothing back the dark tangle of his hair, the other instinctively measuring the heat coming off his skin and trying to gauge the degree of his fever, he opened his eyes.
‘Kate,’ he said wonderingly, ‘you’re here.’
And he looked at her with such a shining look of gratitude that she could hardly speak for the lump in her throat.
Did he realise what he was saying? Where he was? Was he remembering their conversation earlier, or in his fever had he slipped back to a time where the pain of reality couldn’t touch him?
‘Stay with me,’ he begged her huskily, his fingers curling round her wrist and holding on to her. ‘Stay with me, Kate…’
She shuddered as desire swept through her like sheet-lightning.
This was crazy; she couldn’t stay with him. She shouldn’t even be contemplating it. He didn’t even realise what he was saying. She went to prise his grip off her arm, but, as she bent her head to do so, he lifted his own. His eyes were bright with fever, his skin fire-hot.
‘Oh, God, Kate, you don’t know how much I’ve missed you,’ he told her rawly, and then he dropped his head on to her shoulder, burying his face in her hair, and she heard him saying indistinctly, ‘Hold me, Kate. Please hold me.’
And, as he released her wrist and raised his head to look at her, she opened her arms to him, and felt her body tremble with delight at the familiar warmth and weight of him, so well remembered despite all the years without him.
CHAPTER SEVEN
KATE woke up first. At some stage during the night, she must have got into bed with Silas, and now he was lying with his head against her chest, his breath just moving the lace that trimmed her nightgown.
As she tried to ease herself away, he opened his eyes.
‘So you weren’t just a dream,’ he said quietly.
Kate had never felt more uncomfortable in her life. He had the excuse of being gripped by a fever which had rendered him virtually incapable of knowing either what he was saying or what he was doing. She had no such excuse.
‘I…I didn’t mean to stay,’ she gulped nervously, and to her chagrin her throat clogged with tears.
‘I’m glad you did,’ Silas told her softly, and then, easing himself slightly away from her, he lifted one of her hands to his mouth and pressed a kiss into her palm.
Her skin tingled, vibrating with a thousand dangerous sensations. His face was rough with overnight beard, his lips hard and warm. She felt his tongue touch the pads of her fingertips, and she shuddered in reaction, her breath escaping on a hurried gasp.
‘Gentle, compassionate Kate.’ He looked at her wryly. ‘I hope I didn’t make too much of a fool of myself.’
‘No. You…I…’
She was breathing far too fast, desperate suddenly to put a safe distance between them. It had seemed quite reasonable last night to take a feverish, vulnerable Silas into her arms and to hold him as she had so often held their daughter, but this Silas, who was looking at her with clear gold eyes, who was still holding her hand and measuring the rapid thud of her pulse with his thumb, must surely be aware of exactly what was happening to her. He could hardly fail to be aware of it, she acknowledged blushingly, knowing without having to look down at her body that, where the fabric of her nightgown was flattened against her breasts, the taut arousal of her nipples was clearly visible.
He had seen it, she recognised, her breath catching in her lungs as his gaze dipped to her breasts and stayed there.
‘Beautiful Kate,’ he said softly, and then his hand cupped the soft weight of her breast and his thumb traced the hard outline of its peak. Her breath became locked in her lungs and she was trembling with a mixture of arousal and embarrassment.
‘Silas, please,’ she began, but he wasn’t listening to her.
His weight pressed her down into the bed, his hand cupping her breast possessively, his mouth a mere breath away from her own, as he breathed roughly, ‘Kate, it’s been so long. Too long.’
And then he was kissing her. Not as she remembered him kissing her, but as a man kisses a woman who has been greatly desired and greatly longed for, easing her mouth under his own and keeping it there while he fed ravenously on the sweetness of it.
His hands left her body to thread into her hair and hold her head still on the pillow while he kissed her and then kissed her again, parting the trembling bow of her mouth so that he could taste her more intimately.
In the past, when they had made love, she had taken the pleasure that Silas had so generously given her with all the hedonistic selfishness of the very young.
This time it was different. This time she was a woman. This time her pleasure in knowing him was tinged already with pain, with knowing that at best this could be only the most fleeting of moments, that her responsibility was to Cherry and that she was no longer free to consider only herself. Silas had made it plain that a wife and children were encumbrances he did not want, and so, in the knowledge that there could only be this private brief intimacy, Kate allowed her love for hi
m to sweep away all her inhibitions and reservations.
When the time came to pay the price for this time with Silas, she would be ready for it, and no matter what that price was nothing would make her regret what she was now sharing with him, she told herself fiercely as she slid her palms over his shoulders, rediscovering the strong column of his neck, the thick silkiness of his hair as she cupped the back of his head and opened her mouth to the insistent thrust of his tongue.
The first time he had kissed her like this she had been shocked and then thrilled, but now she was mature in body and mind and she responded gladly to his hunger, mentally giving up thanks that he should reveal it to her. She knew how much he wanted her, could feel it in the aroused weight of his body against her own, and yet he did not rush her. And, remembering how he had gently coaxed her through those first few times they had made love, she could have cried for the cruelness of fate in decreeing that their lives should lie apart.
How could he be so compassionate and considerate as a lover, and yet so cold and hard as a man? Or was it simply that his career meant so much to him that he would allow nothing to come before it?
Not a wife, not a child…not anything.
‘Kate.’
She shuddered as the sound of her name on his tongue became lost against her breast, and then shuddered again, letting her mind slide into hot, velvet darkness as he slid her body free of her nightgown.
It was she who caught hold of him and pulled him down to her, seeing his shuddering recognition of his body’s need of her as he cupped the weight of her breast and said huskily, ‘You’re different. Here…’
He opened his mouth over her breast and caressed it gently. ‘And here…’
His hand shaped her waist, his breath a tantalising caress against her breast’s aching peak, but she wasn’t eighteen any more, and she hid the urgency of her need in order to torment him a little in punishment for his own torment of her, running her palm lazily along his body to his hipbone, and then touching the old scar tissue with stroking fingertips as she murmured, ‘So are you. Here,’ she kissed the point of his shoulder, ‘so much broader now, surely, and here, too, I think…’ Her fingertips fluttered against the arch of his lower ribs, and she felt the unsteady, urgent breath he released.
‘And, of course, here too.’
She touched the scar again and felt him flinch slightly. She looked at him and saw the film of perspiration dampen his skin, and the look in his eyes before he veiled it from her, and her own heartbeat picked up the rapid pace of his.
She had seen clearly in his eyes how much he wanted her to touch him, and as she slid the soft heat of her mouth along his body he cried out to her hoarsely and then moaned a raw denial as her lips touched the scarred flesh. She felt his body shudder and flinch beneath her mouth, his fingers digging into her shoulder, but he didn’t push her away.
She wanted to love him as completely and generously as he had once loved her; she wanted to show him that now she was adult, able to give pleasure as well as to take it.
Yet as soon as she tried to touch him intimately he cried out and caught hold of her, protesting harshly, ‘No, Kate. Don’t.’
But, when she ignored him and her mouth touched the flesh of his inner thigh, he released her, his body jerking spasmodically as he fought to control its response to her, his voice thick and raw with all that he was trying to conceal as he protested, ‘Kate, No…’ And then, ‘Oh, God, Kate. Kate…’
But she wasn’t allowed to give him that final pleasure, because he caught hold of her and rolled her beneath him, pinning her there with his weight, caressing every inch of her skin with hands that trembled.
And then his mouth followed the path of his hands, until she cried out to him as he had done to her, and then he buried himself within her, carrying them both quickly to a climax that made her realise how very pale a shadow of reality her memories actually were.
Complete and content, Kate lay in the protection of his arm and looked at him.
His eyes were closed, faint sunken shadows around them marking the toll of his fever. As though he felt her gaze, he opened them and said quietly, ‘Forgive me…but it’s been a long time.’
Something shadowed and painful darkened his eyes; a memory that Kate felt jealously took him away from her. She knew he was thinking of the last woman to whom he had made love, and she wanted to demand to know who she was, but she knew she didn’t have the right.
Instead she said softly, ‘For me as well…’
Instantly, he frowned.
‘Was I too rough? Did I hurt you? You should have said.’
‘You didn’t hurt me.’
They looked at one another for a long time, and she wondered if he was remembering, as she was, the first time they had made love and he had asked her that same question. Then she had pouted a little before giving him her response. She sighed over how young she had been.
‘There’s no one else in your life, then?’
His hand found hers, so much larger and harder, his fingers twining gently with her own.
‘No one,’ she told him gravely, her stomach quivering slightly as he raised her hand to his mouth and slowly kissed each finger.
‘And the man who fathered your child. Do you love him?’ Her face gave her away and she heard him sigh faintly as he said, ‘Yes, of course you do. I shouldn’t have asked the question. I won’t ask you why you’re not with him.’
He said it cynically, and Kate felt her skin start to overheat. What was he thinking? That Cherry was the result of some kind of underhand liaison with a man who wasn’t in a position to marry her?
‘He isn’t a married man, if that’s what you’re thinking,’ she told him heatedly.
‘But he isn’t free to provide a home for you and his child,’ Silas persisted.
‘He doesn’t want to,’ Kate told him shortly. Suddenly she felt very cold and alone. ‘He’s like you, Silas,’ she told him harshly. ‘He doesn’t want the encumbrances of a wife and family.’
She ached for him to deny it, to tell her that he hadn’t married in all these years because he still loved her. She ached for him to give her an opportunity to tell him the truth, safe in the knowledge that he would want to know that Cherry was his child, but instead he turned away from her. A tiny muscle flickered sporadically in his jaw, a sure sign that he was tense and angry.
She had known that she would have to pay for the pleasure of those moments of intimacy with him, but she had not known she would be called upon to pay so soon.
‘I’d better go back to my own room,’ she told him briefly.
‘Kate…’
‘Don’t say anything, Silas. What’s the point? Let’s just both accept what happened and leave it at that, shall we?’
‘If that’s what you want.’
What she wanted…What she wanted was for him to take her back in his arms and tell her he was never going to let her go, she admitted as she turned away from him, her eyes stinging with tears she dared not shed.
How on earth was she going to endure the rest of this period of enforced intimacy with him?
Back in her own bed, she watched the dawn creep across the sky. A new day, but she took no pleasure in the thought. For her, all the remaining days of her life would be haunted by Silas and her love for him.
Ridiculously, after what had happened, she overslept, and it was Silas coming into her room who woke her.
To her consternation she saw that he was fully dressed and, worse, that he was carrying a cup of tea.
‘Feeling OK?’ he asked her softly, putting it down beside the bed.
Pain hit her, swamping her. He could be so tender, so caring; it was hard to accept that he didn’t love her and didn’t want their child.
‘Of course I am,’ she replied irritably. ‘For heaven’s sake, Silas, last night wasn’t the first time I’ve made love,’ she told him stingingly.
His calm, ‘I know,’ silenced her; and as she bent her head over her cu
p of tea she knew that her face was burning.
‘Your daughter rang. I told her you were still asleep. She sounds very mature for her age.’
Her heart almost stopped. She had picked up her cup, but now she returned it to its saucer with a betraying clatter.
‘She is.’ Her voice shook and so did her body.
‘She sounds very like you,’ Silas added softly.
He couldn’t begin to describe to her what he had felt like hearing that childish voice and recognising in it the more mature tones of the woman he loved. He ached to be able to tell her how much he wished he had been the one to give her her child, but he hadn’t been and he never would be. And he hadn’t sunk quite so low yet, thank God, that he was prepared to use the sexual chemistry between them to force her into a relationship which would mean that she would never be able to have the family she had always wanted.
He remembered them talking about it…
‘Oh, I’d want at least four children,’ she had told him confidently, and he had smiled at her, already picturing her swollen with his child, already anticipating how he would feel when he held their first-born.
She would give him sons, she had told him proudly, and he had told her he would prefer girls.
Now there would be neither.
A contagious infection…poor medical attention…a diagnosis made far too late, and the result was that for him there would never be any children.
If he told her…But he knew how much having a family meant to her, and he couldn’t bear to see her shrink from him in horror and pity.
A man who couldn’t father a child. He felt the sweat break out on his skin, and cursed. He had thought himself over that particular mental hurdle long ago; all it had taken to show him that he wasn’t was having the warmth of the woman he loved in his arms; of filling her flesh with his own in that most intimate of physical unions; of hearing her cries of pleasure as he took her to the highest peaks of delight.
Had she cried out with joy the night she had conceived her lover’s child?
