Fated Folly (18 page)

 

 

 

Chapter Seven

 

Clare leapt back, her eyes flying open. She had not heard her husband advance upon them from the steps at the far end of the arbour that led up to the driveway before the house.

‘
Oh, heavens!' she gasped, and glanced at Ashendon.

He was smiling, as assured and calm as ever, as he reached into his pocket for his snuffbox. ‘Good day to you, Cousin Rupert.'

‘
It is, in fact,' Rupert grated, ‘a singularly ill day.'

‘
Has the sun gone in again?' Ashendon looked up at the sky. ‘Ah yes, so it has. I had not noticed.'

‘
Oh, for pity's sake!' Clare exclaimed, suddenly furious. ‘If the two of you are going to start that again—'

‘
Be silent!' snapped Rupert harshly.

Clare's heart thumped painfully. God in heaven, but he was furious!

Ignoring her, Rupert turned on Ashendon. ‘If you value your skin, you will remove from this vicinity forthwith!'

Clare saw Ashendon's momentary startled look, but he recovered swiftly, taking a pinch of snuff as if he had not a care in the world.

‘
Dear me, cousin. You behold me positively shaking at the knees.'

Rupert's hands curled into fists, and he advanced a pace, his tone ugly with menace. ‘Get out—before I beat you to a pulp!'

Ashendon dropped his snuffbox in his pocket and threw up a hand. ‘I am gone, cousin.' He added as he backed away, ‘I freely give place to one of Mendoza's pupils. You have the field.'

Rupert advanced another pace, raising his fists, and Ashendon uttered a rather high-pitched laugh, turned and ran lightly up the steps.

The interlude had given Clare a chance to recover a little from the shock of Rupert's reaction, although she still felt shaky.

‘
There is no need for violence. He meant nothing by it. And he is only a boy, after all.'

Rupert's smouldering gaze came to rest on her face. ‘A boy. And only a matter of five or six years older than you.'

‘
Well, he does not seem like a man to me,' Clare said excusingly, annoyed by his sarcasm.

‘
Then why the devil were you kissing him?'

‘
I was not kissing him,' Clare protested indignantly. ‘He kissed me.'

‘
The distinction escapes me.'

‘
There is a distinction! It is not as if I wanted it.'

‘
Very well, ma'am, if I am obliged to confine myself to your childish logic, why the devil did you allow him to kiss you?'

‘
I'm not a child!'

Rupert seized her roughly by the shoulders, ignoring her words. ‘If you wanted Ashendon, why in God's name didn't you take him when you had the chance?'

‘
I don't want Ashendon. I never wanted Ashendon. I detest Ashendon!'

‘
Then you must have taken leave of your senses, to be kissing a man you detest!'

‘
Why shouldn't I? At least he finds me desirable, even if you don't.'

‘
I don't find you desirable?' Rupert said incredulously.

‘
How should you, when you have this—this “B” woman at your feet?'

He shook her. ‘My God, Clare! Didn't I tell you I have not been with her?'

Clare brought up her fists and tried to push him away. ‘Then you had better do so, and leave me to kiss whom I choose.'

Rupert's eyes flared fire again. Savagely, he said, ‘You'll kiss no one—other than myself!'

His lips came down so hard on hers that Clare uttered an involuntary protest. His arms crushed her, almost lifting her off her feet. There was an instant of staggering sensation, as if the world had erupted about them. Then, just as suddenly, the pressure lifted off her mouth and his hold loosened.

Clare stared up at him in a mixture of shock and startled happiness, and she saw the anger die out of his eyes, to be replaced by an expression of acute suffering.

‘
Oh, my God,' he groaned, dragging her back into his embrace.

This time his lips were gentler, and Clare experienced instant rabid heat as they touched hers. She heard his indrawn breath, felt his arms tighten and the power of his muscled torso down the length of her body. Then his lips gentled hers apart and a flood of warmth drove away everything except sensation.

She had no idea that her own arms were about his neck, that the touch of her fingers in his hair, the feel of her lithe limbs against his own, and the sweet yielding softness of her mouth, was driving him into frenzy. For Clare's body had taken on a life of its own, her mouth answering the quest of his, her veins running riot with a tingling sensation that rose to her brain, dizzying in its intensity. Fleetingly, the thought passed through her mind that she was dying, for all at once her bones melted away, and she sagged in Rupert's hold.

He cradled her to his chest, drawing her back up into the strength of this added support, and his eyes opened as his lips finally, reluctantly, came away from hers.

Languorously, Clare's own eyelids fluttered open, and she smiled up at him in so innocent a pleasure as pierced him, instantly, with a shaft of sheer agony.
What had he done
?

A voice calling out saved him. ‘Uncle Rupert? Clare? Where are you?'

‘
Pippa!' he said gutturally, and abruptly released her.

Clare all but fell, her knees were so weak, but he put out a hand and, just as he had done at the very first moment of their meeting, said quickly, ‘Steady!'

A smile curved Clare's lips at the memory. But she uttered a soft ‘Drat!', for the most magical moment of her life had just been ruined by her sister-in-law. An instant later, the world dimmed.

‘
I've broken my word,' Rupert uttered in a harsh voice. ‘May God forgive me!' His eyes were unmercifully hard as he looked at her. ‘I was angry. Upset. I lost my head. Don't think of it again.'

He strode off on the words, and Clare stood there, broken. How could he? Oh, cruel! To sweep her into ecstasy, and then fling her down to hell again. Almost, at this moment, could she hate him. Almost could she wish he had never married her. As he did. Oh, God, just as he did! May that woman be accursed, whoever she was!

But there was Pippa, waving from the driveway. There was a luncheon to be got through, and the business of farewell. And awaiting her inside the house, her brother. Not that she need concern herself that Justin would notice anything. He was far too wrapped up in his own present happiness, both delighted and dazed by the prospect of fatherhood, to take any account of his sister's affairs. Besides, he was too fearful of Rupert to be of any help, even if he had known of her problems. For the first time, perhaps, she did miss her parents. Papa's doting fondness would be balm at such a moment.

Sighing, she turned for the terrace steps. Inside, she must also face Christian. Not to mention Ashendon, if he had not run away. Ashendon! All at once, Clare's brain was whirling. He had been glancing back at the house. The library windows, where Rupert must have been standing. And he had sent Christian off. Had assumed such a sympathetic mien. Heavens, what a simpleton she was, to fall right into his trap. What in the world did the hateful wretch mean by it?

***

 

Rupert strode restlessly to the tallboy in the recess between the shelves that lined one wall of his library, and seized the brandy decanter again. It was empty.

With an oath, he slammed it down, crossed to the bell-pull by his desk and tugged it violently. Then he flung into his chair to await his butler. The neglected correspondence lay in a welter of confusion on his big blotter. Impatiently, he gathered it up and stuffed it into a drawer. He had no mind for anything tonight but the brandy bottle.

How much had he drunk? Four, five glasses? Did it matter?

For perhaps the fiftieth time that day, he groaned, raising his hands to his disordered hair and kneading his brow. How could he have done it? One ill-considered thrust of jealousy, and everything he had so painfully built up was gone. If only it had been any other man than Ashendon!

But at once his conscience gave him the lie. Any other man. Any man at all, other than himself. He could not endure it—to see her in another man's arms. To know her soft little mouth was under another man's lips.

Even the thought of it made the violence roar up again in his chest, and he surged out of the chair, reaching for the bell-pull to tug at it with renewed vigour. A knock at the door stayed his hand, and he called out, ‘Who is it?'

‘
Brookland, sir,' came from the other side.

Thank God. Hastily, almost clumsily, Rupert swung around the desk and went to unlock the door he had barred against the possibility of Clare's seeking him out. It had been bad enough getting through the luncheon and waving the travellers off. Worse, going in to dinner where Berinthia Flimwell mercifully provided a third. Alone he could not face her.

‘
You rang, sir?' enquired the butler, as his master wrenched the door back.

‘
Brandy!' Rupert said succinctly. ‘The decanter is finished. Get me a bottle.' He began to close the door as the butler bowed, and then opened it again, adding curtly, ‘Two bottles!'

‘
As you please, sir,' said Brookland.

But the butler shook his head sadly as the door closed and the key turned in the lock, and went off through the great hall towards the stairs that led down to the wine cellar. He sighed a little when he returned a few moments later, bearing a tray upon which reposed a fresh glass and only one neat bottle, Brookland having his own views on his master's proposed carousals.

He did not notice the eyes that watched him from the gallery above. Nor, when he had handed the tray to his solitary master, and sighed at the finality of that key turning in the lock, did he hear the soft closing of a door abovestairs.

Within the library, Rupert was already tossing off another glass. But the fiery liquid, burning its way down his throat, did little to assuage the torment of his mind.

That he had broken his word to Clare was bad enough. That he had done so after their conversation of the other day was disastrous. One moment expressly to state his unalterable determination to wait for her to be older, the next to treat her to a display of possessive violence. What was she to think? But she had taunted him with a lack of desire for her. Devil take it, but he wanted her, to his everlasting shame, like a man with a raging thirst.

Within a day of his quixotic proposal, he had known it was imprudent. Within an hour of the wedding, with his pretty young bride—the sparkling mischief quizzing him even at the wedding breakfast as she savoured her triumph over the ill-fortune that had almost brought her down—he had known it was the folly she had called it. Folly with a vengeance.

There had been only one sensible road to take to cure him of the most foolish
tendre
for a chit—no, a child, never forget that—threshing in the throes of calf-love. Distance. And time. That road he had barricaded when he married her.

He should have foreseen it. Day after day in her company. Night after night in her bed—
in
his mind
. Feeding his affection, fuelling the ache in his loins, until he was lost, his heart so full of her that the effort to conceal it, the sheer brute force of will involved, was making him mad.

Else he had not committed so lunatic an act as he had done today. And worst of all, with a girl who was of an age with his niece, and looked a great deal younger to boot.

Disgust at himself rose in him again, and he seized the bottle he had opened, taking a drink straight from its mouth. To his chagrin, the liquor affected his faculties very little as it sank down in the bottle. He had wanted to forget. But his memory remained too intact for comfort, and a demon of longing still racked his unruly loins.

But it had one effect at least. When, in the early hours of the morning, he dragged himself upstairs, and had almost literally to be put to bed by his sleepy valet, he sank into stertorous oblivion.

He was shaken into wakefulness at an unseasonable hour.

‘
What the devil—?' he mumbled, starting up.

Then the effects of his depredations on the brandy bottle last night made themselves felt. Groaning, he fell back on his pillows, throwing an arm up and clutching his head.

‘
Are you mad, Riggs?' he muttered fretfully. ‘What the devil did you wake me up for?'

‘
I regret the necessity, sir,' said his valet apologetically, producing a damp cloth and laying it to his master's head.

Rupert seized it gratefully, sighing as he held it to his aching brow, muttering, ‘Ah, thank you. But go away now, there's a good fellow, and let me die in peace.'

‘
I beg your pardon, sir,' said Riggs apologetically, ‘but I dare not do so. Her ladyship has expressed concern at your absence from the breakfast parlour.'

‘
Oh, my God,' moaned Rupert, rolling over onto his side and burying his head in the pillows.