Charlotte Lamb - Pagan Encounter

by Charlotte Lamb

  'What sort of flowers?' she asked, her lids closing.

  Roses and violets,' he said, his lips moving over her temples.

  She chuckled, 'I wash it in egg and lemon, actually.'

  He groaned. 'As I said, women are the hard-headed ones.'

  'Wrong answer, Matt?' she asked sleepily.

  'Wrong answer,' he agreed, shifting his body slightly so that her head fell across his lap into the crook of his arm. She blinked lazily, surprised, and saw the dark mask of his face staring down at her.

  'I'm so sleepy, Matt,' she whispered.

  'I know,' he said softly. His face descended and her lids closed. Their mouths touched lightly. Her lips parted without any pressure from him and her arms slid up to hold his neck, pulling him closer. The kisses were gentle, sensuous, exquisitely soft. Without passion, Leigh surrendered to the comfort of the slow movements of his mouth, soothed to the point of sleep. Her response grew more and more languid. Matt drew back and looked at her cool oval features, his hands pushing back the fine shimmering hair.

  Leigh breathed deeply once, then tried to open her eyes. He picked her up in his arms and walked with her into the bedroom. She staggered as he placed her on the bed and he supported her.

  'Just sit still,' he said gently. She felt his hands moving over her and forced her lids open.

  'Matt, no!'

  'You're too damn tired to undress yourself.' he said mockingly. He removed her dress and shoes, but she had dragged herself back to a vague state of awareness, and hurriedly pulled away.

  'I can do the rest,' she said firmly.

  He laughed, looking at her oddly. 'Goodnight, Leigh. I'll let myself out,' he said, bending to kiss her.

  She accepted the kiss softly, her lashes flickering on her cheek. He walked to the door and she watched him, seated on the bed, her long silken hair flowing over her naked shoulders. Matt looked back and she felt the shaft of desire in his eyes. Then he went out without a word and Leigh sighed.

  That night something seemed to have shifted the balance of their relationship. Leigh returned to work on the following Monday, finding herself, as she had feared, the object of many curious, speculative glances, and waited for Matt's appearance with a sense of apprehension. When he came into the office, darkly elegant in his for-' mal suit, he glanced towards her, a faint smile on his face, his eyes warm.

  'Good morning, Leigh. Pleasant weekend?'

  'Yes, thank you. Did you?' She made the obvious response slightly hesitantly. She had half expected all weekend to hear from him, but he had made no sign.

  'Super,' he sighed, 'I went down to see my parents.'

  'Oh?' She knew nothing much about his family. Her only glimpses had come from Mrs. Sam's rambling gossip about him.

  'They live in Hampshire,' he told her. 'Just beyond the New Forest. It's a very peaceful place, isolated enough to be very quiet, but near enough to Christchurch for shopping and sailing.'

  'Sailing?' Leigh looked at him in surprise. 'Do you sail?'

  'I've a boat at Christchurch.' he said. 'When I can get down there I like to sail for a few hours. It's relaxing, a different sort of struggle.'

  She looked obliquely at him. 'You enjoy conflict, don't you, Matt?'

  He gave her a mocking little smile, it's the breath of life to me,' he said softly.

  The telephone rang and she answered it. Her voice was cool as she recognised the caller. 'Of course, Miss Lord, I'll put you through at once.'

  She turned her head to glance at Matt in silence.

  He gave her a curious little smile, his eyes unreadable, and went through to his own office, closing the door. Leigh put Cathy Lord through to him and got on with her work.

  Once the avalanche of the day had started it never seemed to stop. She was kept working flat out from the moment she arrived until the time she left.

  Her relationship with Matt was as quietly intimate as if they were old friends. He talked to her easily, confidentially. He trusted her judgment when he had some problem to unravel. They worked in total harmony together day after day.

  "Leigh knew perfectly well that gossip about them was circulating freely. She no longer ate in the canteen because she found the ordeal of being so scrutinised unbearable.

  Some days she brought in a pre-packed lunch to eat in the office if she knew she would be very busy. Some days she ate in the board room when Matt had a working lunch. Once or twice he broke off at one o'clock and said casually, 'Let's eat out, Leigh.'

  Without protest she would eat lunch with him at a quiet restaurant, their talk always of work.

  She had ceased to make sense of what was happening between them. She had ceased to make plans to punish him for what he had done to Ann. She existed day by day in a state of abeyance, as though she did not know where life would carry her next.

  Cathy Lord came into the office from time to time, polite but guarded with Leigh, and it was clear that she had not as yet heard any of the gossip which was rife in the building. It was only a matter of time, Leigh thought wryly. What would Matt do then?

  It occurred to her at times that he might plan to erase her from his life as ruthlessly as he had done Ann, but the prospect was not somehow convincing. Leigh watched him as he talked to Cathy, his arm around the girl's slender shoulders, and felt an ache of pity for the adoring, vulnerable young face lifted to gaze at him. She knew in the depths of her being that Cathy had never once seen Matt as she had seen him. The relationship was unequal. Cathy was out of her class with him; she had no idea at all of his true nature. The glamour of his image clung about him whenever those bright green eyes gazed at him. Yet Leigh knew that the image he projected outwardly was only a shadow of the man, not the man himself.

  Leigh winced at the idea of how Cathy would feel when she heard the gossip about Matt and herself. She had no more wish to hurt the girl than she would have had if it had been her cousin Ann.

  The weeks went by and summer faded into autumn. Leigh was so accustomed to the office work that she found it less and less of a strain to cope with the pressures it daily laid upon her. In September, Cathy Lord flew to America for a month to visit her uncle in San Francisco. Leigh was relieved at the news. It delayed the moment when Cathy would burst out with jealous accusations.

  The long hours she spent in Matt's company had their own brand of delight. She enjoyed working with him, and was gradually able to lift some of the routine burden from his shoulders by sifting through the piles of paperwork which came into the office each day, deciding whether he needed to read it or not, and compiling a brief list of the contents of memos and letters so that he could see at a glance what was going on in the organisation.

  Their lunches together were more and more frequent. If Matt was not attending some necessary business function, they habitually ate out. Several evenings in the week he drove her home and came into the flat to eat dinner she cooked. Afterwards they sat on the couch and listened to music by the firelight, her head on his lap while he stroked her loosened hair.

  'It's a very relaxing occupation,' he said mockingly, smiling down at her. 'Better than worry beads.'

  'Thanks,' she said, tongue in cheek. 'Perhaps I should patent it. I'd make a fortune from tired business men.'

  A gleam came into his eyes. 'I've no doubt you would, but I might have something to say about that.'

  'You have something to say about everything,' she retorted.

  He cupped her face in his warm hands and kissed her in that slow, sensuous fashion which turned her blood to fire and made her totally pliant in his arms.

  The evenings always seemed to end the same way. Matt would make love to her with disturbing precision until she was almost crazy, then he would get up to go, leaving her aching with angry frustration.

  One night, after he had got up, raking down the ruffled silvery dark hair, she burst out huskily, 'What are you doing to me, Matt? Trying to break my spirit?'

  His hands lowered from his hair. He looked at her penetratingly
, is that what I'm doing.

  Leigh?' he asked oddly.

  'I don't know what you think you're doing.' she said furiously. Her face was flushed and bitter as she stared back at him. 'You're driving me out of my mind!'

  His eyes narrowed. 'Why?' he asked, the question dropping very quietly.

  She got up and walked restlessly to the fireplace. 'Oh, forget it,' she said thickly.

  'Goodnight. Matt.'

  'Answer my question,' he said, moving behind her.

  She shook her head.

  His hand turned her to face him, his fingers gripping tightly at her shoulder. 'Why am I driving you out of your mind, Leigh?'

  'You know perfectly well why,' she said huskily.

  'You tell me.'

  'Why should I tell you what you know already?'

  'I want to hear it,' he said, shaking her slightly.

  She took a long, deep breath. 'I think it's time we stopped this,' she said levelly, 'it's gone on long enough.'

  His eyes hardened. 'If it has to go on for the rest of your life, I'll break you, Leigh,' he said, and the stark statement sent the blood rushing out of her face.

  She stared at him, her blue eyes almost dark in the whiteness of her face. He had admitted it.

  Her chin rose. Her mouth set hard. Quietly, she said. 'You'd better go. Matt.'

  He stared at her, his eyes narrow and restless, 'I wish I could take off the top of that beautiful head and see what's going on inside it,' he said, almost to himself. 'You're an expert on camouflage, aren't you, Leigh? God knows what's going on behind that exquisite cameo of a face.'

  'We're two of a kind, you told me,' she said flatly, 'I don't understand you, either. Matt.'

  There was a curious look of consideration about his features, as though he were debating a course of action which troubled him.

  His eyes tried to probe into her guarded glance, but she showed him nothing but a level stare.

  'Goodnight, Matt,' she said again.

  He moved to the door, giving her a last, odd look before he left. Alone, Leigh sat down on the carpet in front of the fire and laid her cold white face on her bent knees, her hair loosely flowing over her hands. Tears began to trickle slowly down her face.

  As if they had been damned for centuries, they grew rapidly, until she was broken with sobbing, her body shaking with it. She cried until she was weary, the fire light gleaming over her white, wet face.

  She did not ask herself the cause of those endless, necessary tears. They had been waiting at the back of her mind for a long time. When they were over she got ready for bed and fell asleep at once.

  The autumn sunlight dappled the office next morning, lying in chequered patterns on furniture and walls. Leigh worked quietly, her face as calm and contained as if she had never cried so helplessly the night before.

  Matt came in, shot her a guarded, penetrating look and went into his own office. The telephone began its clamour. The procession of visitors began. Leigh was grateful for the necessity of concentrating on her daily routine.

  Matt called her into his office later that afternoon to take some notes while they both listened to a tape of a conversation he had had that morning. 'I feel I've missed the weak link somewhere.' he said impatiently. 'Somewhere he said something essential, and I missed it.'

  They listened to it twice before Leigh said suddenly, 'Wait a minute ... turn back about a dozen sentences.'

  Matt wound the tape back and they listened again. She looked at him. 'You noticed that? There's some indecision when he's talking about the negotiations. Maybe the committee aren't unanimous, after all.'

  Matt leant back, throwing a pencil across the table. 'That's it! I knew I'd caught the whiff of something.' He smiled at her wearily. 'I've been puzzling about it all day. Of course, he tried to hide it from me, but it was there all right.'

  Suddenly the door was flung open and Cathy Lord came into the office, her face deeply flushed, a wild, furious look in her green eyes. Leigh took one look and her heart was squeezed in pain.

  The girl's voice was jerky with jealousy and temper.

  'Matt, is it true? Don't lie to me. You and her ... for months, they said. Oh, Matt, how could you? It's. . .it's horrible!' She looked at Leigh with violent bitterness. 'You're his mistress.

  All these months, pretending to be so cool and polite, and you're his mistress!' She turned back to Matt, tears in her green eyes. 'I detest you ... I think you're disgusting!

  When Daddy hears he'll...' Her words broke off, her mouth quivering. 'He'll hate you, too,'

  she ended flatly.

  Leigh got up and moved towards the door, but Cathy flew at her like a wildcat, her fingernails raking Leigh's smooth cheek. Matt made a sound under his breath and caught the girl back. Blood running down her white face, Leigh looked at him almost blankly, then went out of the room.

  She heard Cathy's wild sobbing and Matt's soft murmured response, a gentle soothing note in his voice.

  The cloakroom was empty when she went in there. She washed her face, dried it and tried to cover the long scratched with powder, but they still showed. She returned to her office in a state of trance, collected her things and quietly walked out. In Matt's office she could hear Cathy crying and Matt talking gently to her.

  Leigh took the lift down to the car park and went out that way, grateful for the shadows which hid her face from curious eyes. A bus halted in the traffic jam nearby.

  Instinctively, she got on it and went up the stairs. She sat down and stared out of the window, a totally numb feeling inside her head.

  CHAPTER NINE

  THE bus took her to Hampstead Heath. Recognising her whereabouts, she decided on an impulse to get off and walk across the wild heathland, under the vibrant beauty of the autumnal trees. Her feet shuffled through oceans of dry leaves, their colour merging from vivid red to dull brown, the sound of her movements through them coming to her ears with a dry whisper. A grey squirrel ran across her path, bushy tail frisking, and darted up a great beech tree. The black and white of a magpie shot across the span of a barrel-girthed oak, its bare branches black against the sky.

  Leigh leaned against the oak trunk, feeling the slight warmth of the sun held within the bark, and stared into the trees. The emptiness which had received her when Cathy Lord burst out with her jealous misery seemed to hold her even now. She had had to get away. She did not analyse why--she only responded to the deep impulse to escape.

  Cathy's young face had been twisted with emotion, she thought, shivering. Emotion destroyed. It hurt. Leigh had been unable to stay there and see the pain in the girl's eyes.

  She had been moved by pity, anger, fear.

  The faint warmth of the afternoon was ebbing. The sky lost colour gradually, and she began to be aware of a chill in the autumn air.

  She had stayed still for so long that the birds were ignoring her, their evening search for food before night fell growing more urgent, hopping and flying around the stiff human figure without noticing her. Their flight calls had a melancholy sound. It chimed with the slow grey descent of the evening.

  Unconsciously she was thinking deeply about the situation in which she found herself. She had been avoiding the making of any decision for weeks. The need for a decision had been clear enough to her, but she had preferred to let things drift, vaguely knowing that the explosion which had come that day must come some time, yet preferring to wait for it rather than to run away.

  She sighed deeply. She had to run away, she admitted starkly; she had known that for a long time. Matt was only too well aware of her response to him. She did not understand why he was playing this waiting game, but he had made it clear that sooner or later he would take what she could no longer refuse him. A wry grimace twisted her face. She had never been able to refuse him, she admitted bitterly. From the first day they met he had known he could walk in and demand her surrender without resistance.

  The puzzle of his behaviour still confused her. She wished vainly that sh
e understood him. Failing that, she had no choice but to go, and go fast and far before he caught up with her. She did not doubt that Matt would follow her. Whatever the reasoning behind his long delay in taking the citadel he had called his property, she was under no illusions.

  He would not let her go. She would have to escape before he guessed her intention.

  It was late dusk before she moved, her body reluctant. She took a bus back to Sam's house and cautiously viewed the house. There was no sign of Matt's car outside, but she knew his devious mind too well not to be afraid he would be waiting in her flat.

  She slowly opened her flat door and at once became aware of the fragrance of cigar smoke. A tense stiffness seized her and she looked quickly around the room. In an ashtray a crushed cigar butt lay cold and buried in ash. Quickly she looked into the other rooms, sighing with relief when she realised Matt had gone. He had been there. Leigh eyed the ashtray. How long had he waited? She could imagine his mood.

  Bolting the door with a chain bolt, she hurriedly began to pack. It took her half an hour to gather everything she needed, and she realised she would need a taxi to the station.

  She had originally intended to go to Leicester, but on second thoughts had realised that Matt could easily find her there. Searching her mind for boltholes she had come up with her Aunt Ellen in York, a relative she rarely saw but with whom she had always had a very good relationship. Aunt Ellen would offer her temporary shelter until she found a flat and a job in York, and Matt, for all his quick tongue and domineering manner, would find it hard to browbeat her parents in order to discover her whereabouts.

  Before she left, though, she must speak to Sam and Mrs. Sam. apologising for her sudden departure. It would cause them much inconvenience, and she regretted upsetting them.

  She rang for a taxi to arrive in ten minutes, then went down to speak with Mr. and Mrs. Sam. She could hear their television as she approached their sitting-room, and tapped on the door. Sam looked at her in odd reproach. 'Where have you been, Leigh?'

  he asked. 'Matt was here looking for you. He waited for two hours, but he had to go back to the Gazette.' His face was grave. 'A strike has started--the machine minders have got the bit between their teeth. It looks bad. A long stoppage could ruin the firm. Matt's very worried.'