`We—is your wife with you on this, trip?' she asked, finding the question out of thin air, not interested in his answer, but needing to say something that might take that mawkish look off his face.
`I'm not married.'
`Oh?' said Kimberley politely, vague memories stirring in the background of the nights she had cried herself to sleep thinking of him married to someone else.
`I made a mistake,' he confessed. And beaming smugly, 'I discovered I didn't really love her after all.'
`A good job you found out before you married, then, isn't it?' she said, her thoughts wanting to fly back to Slade, and David taking hold of her right hand irritating her.
`I discovered I never ever fell out of love with you,' he said, which had her leaving her thoughts to stare at him in amazement.
She had pictured this scene so many times in those early days, those sleepless nights. She had wanted it so badly to happen, that he should fall out of love with the woman he had thrown her over for, that he should come back to her. But now it was actually happening, the moment here when many times she had visualised herself melting into his arms, all Kimberley could do was to stare at him and wonder what it was she had ever seen in him in the first place.
`I told ·you I had another reason for coming to see you,' he went on. And while she was staring he let go of her right hand, ferreted around in his trouser pocket and brought out the engagement ring she had returned to him twelve months ago. `This ring should never have left your finger,' he said.
And confidently, while she was too dumb struck by what was happening to make any protest, he took hold of her left hand, raised it and went to put the ring back on her finger.
The sight of her wedding ring knocked him for six,
she could see that. 'You're married!' he exclaimed, his jaw dropping comically as he lifted his dumbfounded eyes to her face. He was near to gibbering then as he rattled out, 'That old tramp, Sammy Smith, told me you were, but I thought he was just having a go at me when he said your husband would give me a fourpenny one if he saw me near you.'
Kimberley had to smile. She could just see old Sammy saying it. But her smile had to be restrained when she found, even with the evidence of her wedding ring there, that David was still not believing the nineteen-year-old girl who had been so besotted over him could have married someone else.
`Tell me it's not true, my precious. Tell me you love me and no one else.'
`It is true. I am married,' said Kimberley solemnly, working hard to keep her face straight, her innate sensitivity having her knowing David's vanity would be sorely bruised if she laughed at him and his astonishment that she should dare to stop loving for him. Soberness came to her as she told him, 'And no, David, I don't love you.' For how could she love him, when her heart and every living part of her was in love with the man she had married? She loved Slade, and her love for David had never been a love like this.
`But you've got to love me,' he was protesting. 'You didn't refer to it in the letter you sent returning my ring, but I knew you always would.'
David had taken some convincing, Kimberley thought after he had gone. He had strutted away eventually like some wounded peacock. But not before he had had the audacity to suggest, since he knew she couldn't possibly be in love with her husband, that she leave him and go with him. She had grown angry then, had been, she thought, a shade pompous herself as she had told him in no uncertain terms that the promises she made were obviously of sterner stuff than his.
But were they? she thought dejectedly. She had
promised herself to Slade, yet their marriage was still not the normal marriage he wanted. And with the fact that he had spent the night before last with some other female hitting her hard, how could she ever keep her promise now?
While David had been with her there had been no time to think. But she had too much time before Slade was due home in which to do some thinking. And how was she ever to keep from him that somehow, God knew how, for she couldn't fathom it, she had fallen heart and soul in love with him?
It had taken seeing David again to show her where her true feelings lay. Though when she considered that sickness that had invaded her when Slade had openly told her about his beautiful woman friend, she realised she would soon have got there without any help seeing David again had given her. She had been jealous, she still was—and it hurt.
Kimberley had many hours of painful, gut-tearing jealousy to go through before Slade came home. The fact that he was later home that night than usual had her certain he had made a detour to be with his very beautiful companion of two evenings ago.
Never had she known such terrible emotional trauma. Her love for him, her imagination at him sharing with some other woman so much as a smile had her fighting to keep tears at bay.
At nine o'clock, her ears strained from listening for the sound of his car, she heard him pull up outside, and was then in so much of a dither, she didn't know how she was going to face him.
If she had been hoping, in those agonising hours of waiting, that once she saw him again she would find she didn't love him after all, then the moment she laid eyes on him Kimberley knew she had been hoping in vain. For even though his face was stern, as if something had gone wrong with his day, she knew he was the one and only man for her—and she had no idea
how she was going to contend with it.
She wanted to make some snappy remark like, Fancy—you remembered where you live!' But she couldn't speak. She was afraid something in her voice would betray that she wanted to fling her arms around him, beg him to forget all other women, to let him know she would be his whenever he desired her. Afraid her eyes would give her away, Kimberley couldn't hold that flint-hard look he bestowed on her.
`Is there any reason you can't look me in the eye?' were his first words. Not very pleasant-sounding words either, as with his usual 'shame the devil' tactics Slade had seen anyway that something was wrong and wasn't hesitating to bring it out into the open.
'N-no reason at all,' she said huskily, knowing that this was one time he would have to put her on the rack before she would come out into the open, tell him she loved him—and not then.
She kept her eyes lowered when she heard the grating of a kitchen chair she had left in the way. She knew Slade had unceremoniously moved it aside, and braced herself as he came over to her. Her nerves stretched to screaming as unspeaking he stood in front of her. Then quietly, breathing deeply, he said:
`I gave old Sammy a lift up from the crossroads. He tells me you had a visitor this afternoon.'
Her head shot up at that, hope ridiculous in her heart that Slade was being tough with her because he was jealous. Then the hope went plummeting back to where it came from. He wasn't jealous, she could see that. There was nothing but distaste emitting from those eyes, a definite navy blue now, that on coming home he had been informed by the village poacher that his wife had been entertaining her ex-fiance in his absence.
But she had done nothing wrong, and she made her eyes stay on his. But in doing so, in meeting his piercing scrutiny, she couldn't help that the secret locked
up in her had her blushing.
`So Bennet has been smelling around your skirts,' Slade snapped, and had she not felt anger flame into life at his choice of expression, Kimberley would have known fear from the aggression that was building up in him.
`David called, yes,' she said shortly, and saw an explosion was imminent as Slade's jaw jutted and his nostrils flared at her words. But she could have no idea the explosion was going to come from her, As fiercely, he grated:
`And is that blush indicative that you were able to adjust more quickly to him than you've been able to adjust to me?'
For two seconds Kimberley didn't get his meaning. And then the shock of what he was asking—had she, that afternoon, been to bed with David?—had her reacting violently.
`Don't judge me by your own vile standards!' came spilling from her, at the same time her hand came flashing, as she struck him a
terrible blow across the face.
Her hand stinging from the blow she had struck him, Kimberley felt the hard grip of his hands on her arms. Her face ashen she saw from the fury in him she had just pushed Slade Darville too far.
Her own fury vanished, and fear replaced it, as she knew that Slade's mouth would soon be savage on hers, no tenderness there, that he wouldn't stop there. Shaking that she had brought this on herself by serving him that terrible blow, she felt his brutal grip on her arms intensify, and thought her bones would break as Slade fought a losing battle for control..
She saw his teeth clench tightly, then hardly daring to believe it she saw he had mastered his temper. She felt relief surge in that he wasn't going to take her in anger when his arms dropped to his sides. But she was left with a feeling that any movement she made to run
from him would have him hauling her back, that hard - fought-for control lost. Wanting desperately to flee. Kimberley stood rooted. Then she heard his voice, rasping with the control he was exercising.
`Go,' he said, an anger showing in his eyes that terrified her. 'Get out of my sight,' he gritted. 'If I see you again before morning, I promise you the retribution you're expecting will be mine
Kimberley didn't wait for any more. She fled. She was shaking so violently, she had difficulty in opening her bedroom door.
It proved a long night for her. Where Slade slept she didn't know, for he didn't enter her room to cross to the dressing room. At dawn she switched off the bedside lamp, a sadness in her that went too deep for tears. She had learned a good deal about herself this past year. She had recently learned many things about Slade too. She had learned to love him, and not just because he had taught her to laugh again. He had bossed her about, seen to it that she ate, made her furious at times. But oh, how she loved him!
And yet, for her own peace of mind, there was only one way left open to her. Even if she could bear to share him with his other women, she knew her frailties too well. She knew she couldn't stay with him waiting, expecting every day, for him to tell her, 'Nice knowing you', or whatever phrase he used to the women he tired of. She loved him—loved him so much, it went deeper than her love for Bramcote.
CHAPTER TEN
AFRAID that if she saw Slade again her resolve to leave him might be weakened, Kimberley stayed in her room until she heard his car pull away, indicating that he had left for his office.
The very fact he had gone off to work without so much as seeking her out, endorsed for her she was right to go. She needed no other sign that already he was growing tired of her. It was with a heavy heart that she pulled out the largest of her suitcases. She had no intention of coming back for anything. An hour later she left Bramcote.
Why she chose to go to London she didn't know. But sitting in her hotel room later that day, she realised it was because London was where Slade worked. She could be near him in the city; and yet be lost in it. Anonymous.
Not that Slade would come looking for her, she thought, glancing at her watch. Left him she might have, but her thoughts all centred on him. If he wasn't staying late in London with one of his 'friends', then in ten minutes he would be arriving at Bramcote, to find her gone.
She recalled that day, that first day after their marriage when she had disappeared for the whole day. She recalled how furious Slade had been with her when she had eventually turned up, and remembered that she had promised to tell him where she was going if ever again she felt the need to disappear.
For the next ten minutes her sensitivities were pulled this way and that. She hadn't so much as left him a note! Would he be concerned? Go out looking for her as he had before?
No, of course he wouldn't, she told herself. But as ten minutes turned into eleven, and then twelve, Kimberley was a mass of indecision as to what to do.
She knew she would go weak at the knees at just the sound of his voice. Yet supposing just supposing he was worried by her not being there—though annoyed more than worried was probably what he would be at her thoughtlessness in just disappearing, she thought. He had told her he thought her his responsibility, but...
Fed up with the way her agitated thoughts were seesawing, she picked up the phone to get it over with. Then she found it was customary in the hotel she was staying in for the telephonist to get the number for her and to ring her back.
Kimberley gave the Amberton number and replaced the receiver, half of her wishing she had left things as they were.
The telephonist was taking an age. So Slade wasn't in, she thought, sickness gnawing away at her that for the second night in succession he was in no hurry to go home.
The phone jangled, and her nerves were so all over the place, she nearly leapt out of her skin. Her voice was thin and reedy when she managed an eventual, `Hello?'
`Your call, madam,' said the telephonist, and clicked off the line.
`H-hello,' Kimberley stammered.
He did find her in London even if it entered his head to start looking. `I'm in London,' she said. `What the hell are you doing there?' he asked, a fine aggression coming through.
`I—I've left you,' she said, and had to gulp before she said the next bit, which even to her own ears sounded
`Kim! Kimberley—where are you?'
he would never inane in the extreme. 'I forgot to leave you a note.'
She expected to hear him coming roaring back at her with some cutting remark on the lines that he wasn't the bloody milkman—it would have been in keeping. But he didn't. He didn't say anything in the lengthy silence that followed, which had her thinking he was so uninterested he had gone.
Then she heard his voice coming through again, not roaring, not sarcastic, but unbelievably mild, aggression gone, as quietly he asked:
`You didn't think maybe we should talk it over?'
Panic hit her that he was sounding logical. She knew him and his talking things out. He always had had a knack of getting right to the bottom of things. She couldn't bear that he should know how idiotically she had fallen in love with him.
`No,' she said. And before he could reply, she had put down the phone.
She had eaten nothing that day. She had been toying with the idea of going down to dinner, but just hearing Slade's voice, wanting to be back with him, had any trace of appetite vanishing. She would have to begin making plans soon, she thought, going back to sink down into one of the two easy chairs in the room, but not yet, not just yet.
The receptionist had asked her when she had booked in how long she was staying, but she hadn't been sure about that either. 'May I let you know? My plans are flexible,' she had said. Flexible! They were non-existent. Where did she go from here?
Kimberley was still sitting in the chair she had sunk into, when about an hour after her phone call to Slade there was a knock at the door. Listlessly she got up to answer it, good manners making her have a polite smile ready if this was the sort of hotel where they came to turn the bed down each night.
She opened the door, and her smile froze._Slade, still in his business suit, stood there. His face equally
unsmiling, he studied her as she took a step back, then came into the room.
`What—are you doing here?' she gasped. And trying desperately to collect herself, H -how did you know where—where to find me?'
`The hotel telephonist gave me the name of the hotel before she connected us, you supplied the rest.'
Kimberley groaned inwardly. Slade always would be so much smarter than her. 'Why have you come?' she asked, knowing she was going to have to cut him off short if he was determined to have everything out in the open.
He looked at her, the ice in his eyes chilling her as bluntly he stated, 'I thought I should tell you personally that I don't intend to divorce you in order for you to marry Bennet.'
How she kept from showing the shock with which his remark hit her, she never knew. For she was staggered that Slade should think she had left him for— David! She lowered her eyes, her face this time giving nothing away.
&n
bsp; `Who asked you to?' she found enough stiffening to ask, and flicking a glance to him saw her question had shaken him. But it was only for a brief while. Then his aggression was to the fore, and he was asking in return, his eyes glinting:
`You'll live with him while married to me?'
A spurt of anger wouldn't be denied that he was daring to moralise to her. 'I'll do as I please,' she retorted resentfully.
`You'll lose Bramcote.'
`I—I just don't care anymore,' she said—and saw then that she could talk so of her beloved home had come near to rocking him where he stood. It had killed his aggression at any rate/ for his voice was quiet, when he said:
`He means that much to you?'
`I . . .' she began. Then, as once before, she found it
I
impossible to lie to him.
She turned her back on him, wishing he would go, kept her back ramrod-stiff as she waited for him to start trying to prise everything into the open. Then she heard him move, and braced herself.
But she need not have bothered, for she didn't feel a hand come to grip her shoulder. She did not feel herself turned, made to face him, but instead heard the door behind her quietly close.
She did turn then, voluntarily—to find he had gone. And she wished with all her heart he was back there with her.
The reality that he had gone, that never would she see him again, was debilitating. He had driven all the way back to London solely, she knew now, to tell her he wasn't divorcing her—though had he not done so he would have realised soon enough that she wouldn't be making the first moves to be free. Her pride surfaced. Perhaps it was a good thing he had called. Wasn't it just as well he had gone off thinking that David Bennet still held her heart?
Eventually Kimberley went to bed. Never in her life had she ever felt so alone, so alone and bereft. She had thought she had known the pain of losing someone before. But oh, dear God, it had never been like this.
Exhausted from lack of sleep the night before, she at last found rest from the unhappiness that was eating into her, in several hours' sleep.
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