by Anne Mather
She helped her mother to serve dinner. Mrs Raynor had no daily help, only old Mrs Latimer who came in two mornings a week to do the rough work, and as she was in her seventies now, more often than not Helen found herself cleaning up after her. But Mrs Raynor wouldn’t hear of asking her to leave, and besides, she enjoyed the gossip the old cleaner usually had to impart. Mrs Raynor herself worked three days a week as a dental receptionist, more to get her out of the house than any need for the extra money, but on her days off she and Mrs Latimer put the world to rights over pots of tea in the kitchen.
The meal was delicious, as usual—soup and fish, and a sweetly basted duckling in orange sauce. No one could find much room for the raspberry meringue that followed, but Morgan gallantly had a second helping, earning Mrs Ray-nor’s undying gratitude.
Afterwards, they all adjourned to the sitting room again. Helen, strung up and nervous, perched uneasily on the arm of her mother’s chair until Mr Raynor, noticing her restlessness, said:
‘Take Morgan into the study, Helen. I’m sure he’s not interested in all this woman’s talk. Show him that book I bought in Harrogate last week. All about his part of the world, it is. It’s a collector’s piece. I’m sure it would interest you, Morgan.’
Morgan, who had been seated on the couch between his stepmother and Jennifer, rose to his feet politely. ‘If Helen has no objection,’ he essayed smoothly, and after a moment’s hesitation, she got off the chair arm and walked towards the door.
‘Can I come?’
Jennifer’s treble was overridden by her father’s denial, and while her sister grimaced her disappointment, Helen led the way along the hall to her father’s study. Perhaps she should have invited Jennifer to join them, she thought, as Morgan leant past her to open the study door. She wasn’t at all sure her nerves were proof against being alone with him again.
The book her father had bought was lying on his desk and while Morgan closed the door, she went towards it determinedly, pointing at its worn leather binding. ‘It’s a guide to Southern Africa,’ she declared jerkily, ‘published before the First World War. My father collects books, as you can see.’ She gestured towards the book-lined walls. ‘And this book interested him because just recently he was reading Burton’s book about his pilgrimage to Mecca.’
Morgan seated himself on a corner of the desk, leaning over the book to turn the pages. ‘Your father’s interested in Africa?’ he queried, and Helen moved round the desk as she nodded.
‘He—he was there during the Second World War. North Africa, at least. They say it’s the most exciting continent, don’t they? That it gets into your blood? Maybe that’s why my father finds it so fascinating.’
‘He’d like to go back there?’ Morgan asked, straightening and folding his arms, and she shifted uneasily beneath his gaze, fiddling with the amulet that hung around her neck.
‘I—I think so. Not that he’s ever tried. He and Mum—well, they usually spend their holidays in Spain, but perhaps after Jennifer grows up they’ll have the chance to be more—adventurous.’
‘Adventurous?’ echoed Morgan wryly. ‘Is that how you see it?’
He slid off the desk then and to her horror came towards her. Her mouth went suddenly dry and her tongue clove to her palate, but she could not move. Every intimate thought she had ever had about him rushed through her mind in a chaotic stream, and weakness brought a betraying tremble to her knees. What was he going to do? she wondered desperately. Had he guessed why she was so nervous in his company? Had he sensed the paralysing awareness she felt in his presence that made a mockery of her feelings for Barry?
When he stopped before her, she almost swayed against him, but his hand reached out and lifted the gold amulet on its chain, and when he moved closer it was to read the inscription.
‘Do you know what this says?’ he asked, and the normality of his tone was like a cooling draught against her forehead.
‘I—what—oh, no! No.’ She shook her head, and as she did so, the chain moved sinuously against her neck. ‘It—it’s in Arabic, isn’t it?’
‘Yes.’ Morgan’s brows had drawn together in a frown as he observed her agitation, but with a tightening of his lips, he read: ‘Follow thy desire while thou yet livest!’ He dropped the amulet again. ‘Such things were engraved on the walls of temples and tombs. Rather too late for their inhabitants, but not a bad maxim for the mourners at the funeral feast.’
Helen’s tongue appeared to moisten her upper lip. ‘Is—is it a maxim you follow, too?’ she asked unsteadily, aware that for some reason he was angry with her, but unprepared for the violence her words evoked.
‘No,’ he said harshly. ‘No one can. Not unless one is totally without conscience.’ His tawny eyes raked her upturned face with grim bitterness. ‘Are you totally without conscience, Helen? Is that why you’re looking at me like that? What do you want me to do, I wonder? Does a last-ditch affair appeal to you, before the bonds of matrimony tie you down? If so, you’re wasting your time here. Find somebody else to satisfy your desires, because I happen to have a conscience, and whatever Barry thinks of me, I respect him!’
For a minute, Helen was too stunned to answer him, but then a kind of guilty indignation came to her rescue. ‘How—how dare you?’ she gasped, choking on the words. ‘I didn’t invite you here, and I certainly didn’t want to spend any time alone with you! You’ve mistaken a natural effort on my part to act in a polite and friendly fashion towards my fiancé’s brother for something quite ludicrous, and embarrassed us both. You’re despicable! I think you’d better leave. You can make whatever excuses you like to my parents, I don’t care, but I hope I never have to speak to you again!’
She whirled on her heel to make her grand exit, but almost against his will, his arm came out barring her way, and when she turned in the other direction he stepped into her path. There was a look of torment in his face, his mouth twisting with self-derision, and then he reached for her, his hands curving around her nape, compelling her firmly towards him.
‘God, Helen…’ he muttered with a groan, and all her talk of despising him went for nothing beneath the demanding possession of his mouth.
Her head swam with the first touch of his lips. It was all one with the caressing compulsion of his hands on her neck, his thumbs probing the hollows behind her ears, his fingertips exploring the source of her spinal cord. Her hands were crushed between them and when she moved her fingers they encountered an unbuttoned opening in his shirt and curled inside. His skin was warm and roughened with hair, and when she separated more of the buttons from their holes she felt the responsive constriction of his muscles.
His mouth left hers to seek the hollow of her neck, and his hands slid down her spine to her hips, drawing her close against the hardening muscles of his thighs. She had never been so close to a man’s body before, but instead of wanting to pull away, she pressed herself to him, arching her body and creating an intimacy between them that destroyed any hope of dismissing this embrace as the casual result of enforced proximity. They were both fully aware of what they were doing, and his tortured breathing was the only sound she could hear.
It was his hands on her upper arms that finally separated them, forcing her back from him while he still had the strength to do so. Her eyes, seeking his face, could see the actual physical control he was exerting and the strain it was putting upon him.
‘You’re crazy, do you know that?’ he demanded, pushing back his hair with an unsteady hand, but when she made a sound of protest and swayed towards him again, he turned his back on her and put the expanse of her father’s desk between them. ‘Stop it, Helen!’ he ordered tautly. ‘We can’t do this. My God, anybody could have come in and found us!’ He broke off, shaking his head disbelievingly. Then he went on: ‘That sister of yours, for example. How do you think she would have felt if she had come in? How would she have reacted finding her sister in another man’s arms only two days before the wedding!’
Helen drew a deep brea
th and endeavoured to recover her composure, but it wasn’t easy. He was right, she told herself dully, so why didn’t she feel ashamed? Why wasn’t she tearing her hair out, or dressing herself in the mental equivalent of sackcloth and ashes? Why hadn’t she been the one to draw back, instead of him?
She trembled. She had always controlled the situation with Barry. She had never let his lovemaking get beyond certain limits. But Morgan wasn’t Barry, and that was the trouble. With Morgan, she didn’t want to draw back, she wanted to go on and on, giving herself to him, caring little for things like modesty or self-respect, only wanting to please him as he was pleasing her…
Shades of that school friend’s advice, she thought sickly. So much for her bland statements about inadequacy. What price virginity now? She pressed her palms down on to the cool surface of the desk. She was crazy. It was true. Because even now, with half the width of the room between them, she felt nothing but regret that he hadn’t gone further…
‘Helen…’ He was looking at her as he fastened the buttons of his shirt she had opened. ‘Helen!’ He sighed. ‘Oh, what’s the use of denying it? I was as much to blame as you were, but hell, you invited it!’
She moved her shoulders in a little helpless gesture. ‘I know.’
‘What do you mean—you know?’ He expelled his breath noisily. ‘Helen, what can I say? What can I do to show you that I mean it when I say I’m sorry? God help me, I’m sorry.’
She wiped her damp palms down the seams of her silk pants. ‘I—don’t want you to be sorry,’ she said carefully, aware of his harsh incredulity. ‘That—that’s what I mean.’
His eyes were narrowed until they were almost slits beneath his lowering brows. ‘What did you say?’
‘You heard me,’ she insisted, her fingers opening and closing against her thighs. ‘Why do you sound so surprised? Do you think I go in for this sort of thing? Do you think I’d let any man hold me as you have just held me? Do you imagine I’ve let Barry get that close to me?’
‘And haven’t you?’
‘No!’ Her lips trembled with indignation. ‘I—I told you once before that—that I—’
‘—that you don’t sleep around, I remember.’ Morgan’s response was curt. ‘All right, all right. So what am I to gather from that? That I broke some of the rules?’
‘Rules?’
Helen’s voice broke on the word and now she turned her back on him, snatching a tissue out of the box on her father’s desk and dabbing furiously at her eyes. She mustn’t cry, she told herself desperately, not now, not when, as he said, their parents or Jennifer could come in at any moment.
‘Helen…’ He said her name close by her ear and she realised with a start that he had come to stand right behind her. ‘Helen,’ he said again, and there was the same note of anguish in his voice that she had heard before. ‘Don’t make me hate myself any more than I do already.’
Her breathing was coming in short, uneven gasps, but she tipped her head back to rest against his chest, and with a groan of defeat his arms slid round her waist, propelling her back against him. Her body moulded itself to his almost as if it had been designed for just that purpose, and he buried his face in the curtain of silky hair that curled into her nape. His hands moved carelessly upward, over her ribcage to the buttoned neckline of her shirt, sliding inside almost possessively to close over the ripe fullness of her breasts. They surged against his fingers and she felt the unsteady draught of his breath against her neck as his tongue stroked the erratic pulse that fluttered below her jawline. His own heart was pounding behind her and the throbbing demands of his body were no longer in any doubt.
He was twisting her round in his arms to seek the parted sweetness of her lips with his mouth when they heard voices coming along the passage. Almost immediately she was free to do what she could to restore her clothes to order, while Morgan placed himself protectively in front of her, tightening his tie with something less than detachment.
Mrs Raynor came into the room first, followed by Mr and Mrs Fox, with Mr Raynor bringing up the rear. Fortunately, Jennifer was not with them to comment on Helen’s hectically flushed cheeks, or to ask why her mouth was bare of all lipstick, but Mrs Raynor looked at her daughter rather doubtfully, before asking what Morgan had thought of the book.
Morgan, at least, appeared unperturbed. ‘I found it very interesting,’ he replied, and only Helen knew that his smile was a trifle forced. ‘Er—Helen tells me you’re interested in the dark continent, Mr Raynor.’
Helen’s father had been looking thoughtfully at his daughter, too, but now he transferred his attention to the younger man. ‘What? Oh, yes—Africa,’ he nodded. ‘I was in Egypt during the war.’
‘So Helen told me.’
‘Have you and Helen been having a nice chat, darling?’ Mrs Fox queried, seemingly less suspicious of what had been going on than Helen’s parents had been. ‘I’ve just been suggesting to your father that perhaps we ought to be going. After all, Barry is on his own at home, and it would be unkind to be late.’
Helen had stood through all this with a feeling of numbed unreality. The curious looks her mother had been giving her, Morgan’s polite responses, Mrs Fox’s coy reference to Barry’s isolation—none of it seemed real somehow. It was as if she was standing outside herself observing what was going on, but not taking any actual part in the proceedings. She looked at Morgan, but he was not looking at her, indeed, he seemed to be avoiding looking at her, and a sense of panic swelled inside her. Was he not going to say anything, then? Had what had happened between them meant so little to him that he was prepared to go away from here in the sure knowledge that in two days’ time she was going to marry his stepbrother? It couldn’t be true, and yet what else was she to think?
Mrs Fox turned to her then, bringing her down to earth with a distinct thud. ‘I’ll give Barry your love, shall I?’ she asked, touching Helen’s hand playfully, and cravenly, Helen could only nod her head. ‘I expect you’ll see him tomorrow,’ his mother added. ‘I doubt if he’ll be prepared to wait until the ceremony to see you again.’
Gradually they all moved out into the hall, Morgan following the two couples, but just for a second Helen grasped his hand and held him back.
‘Take me with you!’ she whispered imploringly. ‘Please—take me with you?’
‘Take you where?’ he demanded in a low harsh voice. ‘Back to Banklands? Can’t you wait until tomorrow to see your fiancé?’
The look of pain that crossed her face at his deliberately cruel words effected a miraculous change in his expression, and his fingers closed tightly over hers for a moment. ‘Where can I take you?’ he demanded, in an entirely different voice, and she breathed:
‘To Osweba—to Nrubi!’
He stared at her grimly for a moment, then he shook his head. ‘I can’t do that.’
‘Why can’t you?’ she appealed, but he turned away releasing her fingers.
‘Marry my stepbrother,’ he advised her roughly. ‘I have nothing to offer you.’
Helen did not appear to wave goodbye to their guests, and when Mrs Raynor came to find her some minutes later, she was still standing blindly in the study. Her mother entered the room reluctantly, not entirely convinced that she ought to interfere, but sufficiently concerned to know she would have to get to the bottom of the matter.
‘Helen,’ she ventured softly. ‘Helen, what are you doing?’
Like a statue that is suddenly brought to life, Helen lifted her shoulders in a curiously tentative gesture, then, as if gaining confidence from that small activity, she shook her arms and faced her mother courageously.
‘I’m not doing anything,’ she said, but her voice belied the carelessness of her words. ‘Have they gone?’
‘Of course.’ Mrs Raynor came further into the room. ‘But I expect they’re wondering, as I am, why you didn’t bother to go and see them off.’
‘Oh…’ Helen spread her hands with assumed indifference. ‘I didn’t think it w
as—necessary.’
‘No?’ Her mother sounded sceptical. ‘You’re not usually so casual. Is something wrong?’
‘Wrong?’ There was a squeaky note in Helen’s voice which she quickly disguised with a cough. ‘I—what makes you think that any thing’s wrong?’
‘You tell me,’ retorted her mother tersely, and Helen gave a short mirthless laugh.
‘What could be wrong? All the arrangements for the wedding are made, the reception’s booked, my dress is in the wardrobe upstairs, and Barry already has the tickets for our flight from Luton. What could be wrong?’
Mrs Raynor looked at her worriedly, shaking her head, ‘I don’t know. I don’t know what it is. But something’s happened, I know that. I know you, Helen, and I can sense that everything’s not as it should be.’ She paused. ‘Did Barry’s brother say something? I thought you looked a little flushed when we came in here, but at first I put it down to the heat. It’s very warm in here.’
Helen had hardly noticed, but now she shook her head, saying tautly: ‘You’re imagining things, Mum. I—Morgan said nothing. Nothing at all.’
Mrs Raynor frowned. ‘He didn’t do anything else, did he?’
‘Anything else?’ Helen turned her back on her, moving towards the desk, and closing the book Morgan had been looking at earlier. ‘What on earth do you mean?’
‘You know what I mean,’ declared her mother shortly, coming round and forcing Helen to look into her face. ‘Helen! Did Morgan Fox touch you?’
‘Touch me?’
‘Stop repeating everything I say! I’m asking you a straight question. Did Morgan Fox lay his hands on you?’
‘Ellen!’ Mr Raynor’s voice interrupted them. ‘Ellen, for heaven’s sake, what’s going on? Why are you catechising the girl? What’s she done?’
‘That’s what I’m trying to find out,’ exclaimed his wife, her face pale and anxious. ‘Didn’t you think something was wrong when you came in here before? Didn’t you think Helen looked upset ?’
