Fire Under Snow (16 page)

“And neither are you. I'm impressed that you have your emotions in such marvelous control. You don't have to tell me what happened after that. I was there, remember, a very angry witness to that weakling's despicable behavior. When he hid his face in his hands and blubbered – like the child he proved himself to be – that he couldn't bear to look at you, I knew you were better off without him. My relief at his hasty departure was not untouched by worry. I was afraid of the psychological effect on someone of your sensitivity. I could repair the physical defects – use my skill to repeal the penalty you paid for
his
carelessness; I was not empowered to erase the deeper damage he inflicted upon you by his cowardice. The wrong person paid. You – the innocent party – suffered. He got off scot- free. I still think, as I thought then, that you should seek redress. It's still possible. I will help you.” His eyes fixed on her with eagerness glinting in their bright depths. “It's been on my conscience that I let that side, the financial aspect of the situation, drift. You and your aunt were alone. You needed some muscle behind you to protect your rights. I should have supplied it. In that respect I've always felt that I failed you.”

“That's absurd. My reply would have been the same then as it is now. I want nothing from Jamie except my freedom.”

“That's strange.”

“That I've decided I want my freedom?”

“No. That Jamie hasn't asked for his before now. Assuming, of course, that he hasn't approached you about a divorce. In view of what you've just told me, I should say annulment.”

“No. Jamie has made no attempt to get in touch with me, personally or through another party.”

“Why, do you suppose?”

“It struck me as being odd, too, but I've always thought that he couldn't be bothered.”

“Very likely. Something unpleasant and Jamie can be relied upon to avoid it. And now, I'm not going to permit one more word on the subject of that distasteful young idiot. Let's talk of something else and enjoy our meal.”

Sooner than she thought – in a matter of days, as he promised, and not the extended period she feared – she received the telephone call she had been waiting for.

“I'm home, darling.”

“Noel? Is it you?”

“It had better be, or you'll have to answer for it. No one but me is allowed to call you darling.”

“It's just that you – your voice – it sounds strange. Have you been drinking?”

“Try again.”

“Tired?”

“You got it. Come around to my apartment in about four hours, when I've caught up on some sleep. Call a taxi and have it charged to my account. Unless you're going to make me do the courtship bit and come around and get you?”

“I wouldn't be so cruel. Go to bed. I'll join you later.”

“M'm. Like the sound of that,” he growled wickedly.

“In your apartment.”

“What else could I have thought you meant? Frankly, I'm so dead beat you could crawl into bed beside me and I'd still go to sleep.”

“You won't mind if I take your word for it? I'd prefer not to put you to the test.”

He chuckled. “Wise girl. See you.”

She spent the waiting time constructively in taking a shower, washing her hair, selecting something to wear and rejecting it in favor of something else, finally settling for the first choice, the peach dress she had tried out on Sir William.

She ought to tell him about her evening out with Sir William; with her luck someone was bound to have seen them out together and would inform Noel if she didn't. She laughed lightly at the thought of his ridiculous jealousy, thinking it showed a touching lack of vanity. The knowledge that other men would have difficulty in competing with his strong good looks was readily available. All he had to do was look in his own mirror. Alternatively, he could look into her eyes to know that, after him, all other men were nonstarters.

He was up and about when she arrived at his apartment – if only just. His eyes were less alert than usual, his hair was tousled from sleep. She suspected that but for contacting her he would have slept the clock round. He was wearing the blue silk robe she had found so unnerving, but perhaps he had remembered her previous shyness, for he was wearing trousers underneath.

He pulled her into his arms and rubbed his stubbly chin gently across her cheek. His body, lean but toned to peak perfection, carried weight when it came to male potency. Her joy in him found outlet in the singing of her flesh, the excited awareness of her heartbeat.

To maintain any kind of balance, her senses required constant vigil. His body, warm from sleep, his virility, went to her head. Her slipping senses lost that vital grip and she was no longer in control of the situation. It was controlling her – controlling them both, because the desire-glazed look in his eyes and the drumming beat of his heart's blood told her that he was mindlessly drifting on the natural urges and impulses of his body.

Her longing for him made her dizzy; that he wanted her as fiercely was evident in the hungry possession of his lips on hers. She was coming up for breath for the third time when she heard him groan, “Hell, no.”

He might be stronger minded than she was, but he wasn't finding it easy. He was obviously involved in a desperate struggle to regain command. He managed it, and her yielding body was pushed gently but firmly away. “You showed that you trusted me by coming here.”

“Of course.” Her eyes were huge. “If I didn't trust you, there would be no point in going on.”

His face was dark with passion, and the grip he had on her upper arms corresponded with the tight grip he was having to assert on himself. “I won't betray that trust. When I asked you to come around here, it was unspoken between us that nothing would happen. I won't go back on that. I value your opinion of me too much.”

She looked down at her hands. They were trembling. Not because of what would have happened if he hadn't called a halt, but because it hadn't happened. Her own desires unappeased, she was finding it difficult to applaud his high principles.

“Trust is a two-way thing,” she said unsteadily.

“So?”

“There's something I must tell you.”

“I'm listening.”

“While you were away, Sir William phoned me and invited me out for a meal. I could see no harm in it, and so I went. I'm telling you this because I don't want to lose Sir William's friendship because you have got the wrong impression of his interest in me. Also, if I don't tell you, someone else probably will. That's one confession out of the way.”

“Which implies you are about to make another.” His voice was stiff with objection. He was angry with her for going out with Sir William when she knew that he would disapprove.

But his disapproval was completely without foundation. If he would stop chasing ahead of himself, if he just waited and let events take their natural course, he would see that Sir William's thoughts on that score lay in a different direction. The woman he was attracted to was Leonora, not her niece.

The satisfaction of knowing that time would prove him wrong wasn't going to help her at this precise moment. She'd made a mistake by not plunging straight into the main issue: her marriage to Jamie. She had thought that she could lead into it gently by referring first to Sir William, whose name was inseparably linked with that period of her life. She had been wrong. Noel's dark, saturnine head, sitting on well-muscled shoulders, was held at a belligerent angle that did not augur well for the confession she was about to make. With a sinking heart she knew that he was not going to listen to her in sympathy.

“I suppose that lecherous silver-tongued Lothario wasn't satisfied with fawning over you. And I'll bet he didn't stop at kissing your hand!” Dark eyes under contemptuous brows drilled piercingly into hers, the flash of steel-gray sarcasm disarming and forewarning. “Is that what this second confession is about? Did he get you into bed?”

“No!” Her color rose. “I've told you before. It's not like that between us. He's a fine man and a good friend.”

His expressive eyebrow shot up. “You did say he was a man? So if I'm not to question his masculinity, am I to presume that he wouldn't try to get you into bed until he'd put a ring on your finger?”

She shook her head in despair. “You're obsessed with the idea that there's something going on between us, but there isn't. But yes, as you are so insistent, if there were, then Sir William would get his priorities right. He hasn't asked me to marry him because his interest lies elsewhere. And stop implying that I regard my body as an item of barter, something I'm only prepared to give in exchange for a wedding ring. It makes me sound cold and calculating and I'm not.”

“You are not cold. I can vouch for that.”

“Does that mean I can come down from that pure and untouched pedestal where you put me and where I've never belonged?”

A flicker of something touched his eye, then hardened into sarcasm. “What are you saying, my love? That you're not pure and untouched?”

She was angry now. There seemed to be no way to break it gently to him. She might as well blurt it out and get it over with. “What I'm saying is that I'm married.”

“Say that again,” he demanded.

The look on his face made her quail. “I didn't mean to break it to you as starkly as that, but you goaded me into it.” She bit hard on her lower lip. “I'm sorry, Noel. It's true; I am married. I know I should have told you before.”

“Too right you should. My God, what a laugh! I've been tying myself in knots not to touch you, and if I'd known from the beginning that you were another man's leftovers I might not have wanted to.” His equanimity was frightening. There was a tensile quality about it. Any moment it would snap. “It's so incredible that I'm tempted to say I don't believe you. But why would you lie about such a thing? You've nothing to gain – and much to lose. Why the hell didn't you tell me?”

“Perhaps because deep down I was afraid to. I knew you'd react this way. Whether you like it or not, I had a life before we met. I haven't been preserved in ice waiting for you to find me.”

“Where is your –” He swallowed, obviously choking on the word – “husband?”

“He – Jamie – left me.”

“Jamie?”

“Jamie Gray.”

That was the snapping point. Without a word he seized her by the arms in a powerful grip and shook her until her jaw locked and a swirling whorl of red mist floated before her eyes. “There couldn't be two Jamie Grays. You do mean the one I've been with these past few days? It is
that
Jamie Gray?”

“Yes,” she said, wondering at his insistence in making that point clear.

One hand released its cruel hold, but only to transfer itself to her chin, forcing her head back, making her see the contempt expressed on his face. Only then did he speak. “So you're the cause of all this trouble. You are Jamie's scheming little wife.”

“I'm married to Jamie, yes. That doesn't give you call to abuse me.” The interruption went unheeded. Had she spoken? Or if she had, was the only voice at her command too low for him to hear?

“You've slipped up badly this time. You should have stuck to barter – it would have been more profitable. Dallied me on a while longer and set about getting a nice quiet divorce from Jamie. I was so desperate for your body that I would have considered a wedding ring a fair exchange. But no, you were too greedy. You had to go in for blackmail as well.”

“Blackmail? What are you talking about?”

“Don't act the innocent. You've played that role out. Jamie and I have done a lot of talking these past few days. He's told me everything.”

“Jamie has?” she inquired hoarsely.

“That's what I said. He told me it was a whirlwind romance and that you went into marriage without really knowing one another, and all the sordid details of how you couldn't stand the penny-pinching struggling days and the inevitable separations while he established himself in his career. And how you only got in touch with him when you realized he'd made it and you decided you wanted a share of the big time.”

“It's not true, not all of it. The whirlwind romance bit is true. We did go into marriage without knowing one another. But as for the rest – no!”

He ignored her. She might not have spoken. “I don't blame my secretary for giving you his address. It wouldn't have needed a lot of detective work on your part to find it out for yourself. I wondered how you knew her name that time you waited for me in my suite at the club. ‘I thought that was Miss Brown's office,' you said. Bad slip of the tongue that. Incriminating. You're not going to deny contacting my secretary to find out Jamie's whereabouts?”

“No. It's true that I phoned the club and spoke to Miss Brown in the hope of getting Jamie's address. But it was too late. He'd already left for the States.”

“That's rich. It was not too late. You saw Jamie before he went. It was the biggest break he's ever likely to get, and you fouled it up for him.”

“Me?”

“Yes, you. He blames his current fall from grace on the worry you caused him just when he could least deal with it.”

“This is unbelievable. What am I supposed to have done?”

“Threatened to expose him. Don't tell me your memory's that bad. You told him that if he didn't come over handsomely with a slice of the earnings, you intended to give – correction, sell; your sort gives nothing – to the press the intimate and highly personal details of your marriage. It goes without saying that you would add a few unsavory frills of your own for titillation, to command a higher fee.”

“It's simply not ... true,” she said, but she was wavering.

“You don't sound very positive. Decided to stop lying?”