The Hidden Years (56 page)

'Oh, no? I know you want this.'

She had been kissed before in anger, had even deliberately
incited that kind of anger, enjoying the sexual power it gave her, but
suddenly and painfully this was different, her mind and body wiped
clear of the memories which should have given her the experience to
cope with what was happening to her. She couldn't move in his arms,
felt frighteningly helpless beneath his mouth, unable to reject its
bruising pressure, so that her lips were as vulnerable and defenceless
as though the only kisses they had previously known had been those free
from any kind of sexual intimacy. Her body felt curiously stiff, locked
in a strange paralysis, which she recognised as stemming from intense
shock. The shock of her near accident, the shock of Daniel's
presence… and most of all the shock of this brutal,
punishing kiss that wiped away all the years that lay between them,
transporting her instantly back to another time, another place, another
occasion when she would have welcomed the ferocity of that angry male
mouth. .

Suddenly she broke free of her paralysis, biting angrily
at his mouth as she fought its dominance, but to her shock he
retaliated equally violently, his teeth savaging her bottom lip so that
she could taste the hot salt of her own blood.

She made a helpless, angry sound and touched the wound
with her tongue, only to have it pushed out of the way by his as he
quickly explored the small wound and then explored it again, far more
slowly, stroking the violently sensitive flesh.

It was such a brief touch, such a stupid
weakness… such an implausible cause of the heat that
exploded so violently inside her, taking her so completely off guard
that she had no way of protecting herself against it, could only stare
at him with angry, betrayed eyes as she felt the rolling heat burn
through her body. Helpless to stop the sudden fierce tightening of her
nipples, the brief flaring of longing that darkened her eyes, the small
betraying sound she tried to stifle in her throat. All of these were
nothing compared with the reckless racking agony of need that pulsed so
sharply through her lower body, enforcing on her too-intelligent mind
the knowledge that if he chose to, right here and now, without the
softening veils of shared liking, humour or respect, without any of the
trappings of civilisation and sophistication, without the excuse of
senses blurred by a good wine, soft light and sensual music, without
even the comfort of her own bed, without any of the fastidious
trimmings she normally considered an essential ingredient of any kind
of sexual intimacy—clean linen sheets, the amusement and
assurance of knowing how much her partner desired her, of how much she
could tease and torment him—without even the most simple and
basic precautions against pregnancy, she would eagerly, hungrily,
wantonly have allowed Daniel to bring the explosive violence between
them to its natural conclusion, in an act of possession as immediate
and violent as the need it had aroused within her.

It was a knowledge that nauseated and horrified her.
Whatever else she might have been, she had never, never descended to
those depths, to that kind of personal degradation… She had
never wanted a man like this… never felt this savage raw
hunger for another human being to such ah extent that it transcended
every single one of her most deeply held and most private tenets of
self-respect and pride…

As she stared into his face she had a second's horrifying
awareness that Daniel knew exactly what she was feeling, just as
intimately as she did herself; she saw the knowledge in his eyes and
was sickened by the realisation of it, shocked back to a burning,
bitter reality that had her tearing herself out of his arms, at the
same time as he said thickly, 'No, Sage, don't…'

He was standing between her and the door, and she could
see no way of effecting the escape she so desperately craved. No way of
salving her pride by ignoring what had happened, by lying or
pretence…

There was nothing for her to do but face him. She did it
as bravely as she could, knowing there was no point in concealment, in
the fiction of a deceit which would convince neither of them, and only
leave her feeling worse than she already did.

Head held high, she asked bitingly, her voice low with
self-revulsion, 'Don't what, Daniel? Don't lust after you like a bitch
on heat?'

She saw the bones in his face tighten as his jaw clenched
and she laughed bitterly. 'You're quite right. It's obscene, isn't it?
Disgusting—the very last thing you want, and the very last
thing I want as well. You needn't worry—these days I do have
some small measure of self-control.'

She gave him a glitteringly painful smile that made him
wince and ache inside. 'Don't ask me why I want you—I don't
know the answer. Perhaps it's the old story of the one who got away.'
She was back in control of herself now, her voice strong and
self-mocking, the whiteness dying out of her skin, the shock leaving
the green eyes remote and wary, as though she was looking not at him,
but beyond him.

Determinedly she walked towards him, intending to leave,
but he checked her, standing in her way, 'Sage, we—'

'There is no "we",' she told him sharply. 'There never has
been and there never will be.'

'You want me.'

She looked at him, her eyes a bitter hell of rage and
impotence. 'Yes,' she agreed shakily. 'But I want my self-respect more.
Gaining it has been a long, hard fight for me, Daniel. I don't need any
man to have sex with me out of pity or curiosity… and if you
were thinking of using my… my vulnerability towards you in
order to bribe me into conveniently forgetting about your involvement
with this place…'

She'd gone too far. She saw it in his eyes, felt the
fierce burn of his anger, suddenly gone out of control.

Panic clawed at her, an entirely female panic born of
instincts given to the feminine sex at the very beginning of time. She
tried to push past him, forgetting all that her life had taught her,
but instead of standing to one side he caught hold of her, half lifting
her off her feet as he almost slammed her back against the wall,
imprisoning her there with the weight of his body, while his fingers
closed round her wrists, restraining her flaying arms.

As his mouth touched hers, she heard him saying fiercely,
'I should have done this years ago. God knows if I had…'

The words stopped, dying beneath the pressure of a kiss
she tried to tell herself that neither her body nor her soul had
hungered for for nearly a half of her whole lifetime. Memories she had
thought long forgotten stirred, giving birth to an aching need, and
with that need came her old fear, her old dread that this man above all
others possessed something that was so dangerous to her that even to
allow herself to acknowledge its presence was to fatally weaken her own
defences.

She fought against herself and him with every ounce of
self-control she had, but he knew her vulnerability now, knew it and
used it against her, refusing to accept the closed hard line of her
mouth, the rigid, defensively tight muscles of her body, letting his
full weight rest tormentingly against her, keeping her arms at her
sides, while he moved against her with such deliberate sensuality that
her soul cried out inside her in silent anguished need and her flesh
ached as though it had been pummelled by a thousand tormenting fists.

As he felt the response stir inside her, and suffered his
own helpless, overwhelming reaction to it, he lifted his mouth from
hers, briefly relaxing the pressure that imprisoned her, wanting to
find the words to soften the bitterness in her eyes, to tell her that
she wasn't alone in either her anguish or her need, but that brief
moment of relaxation was all she needed to break his hold on her, and
to push past him, almost running towards the door.

He could have stopped her… could have caught up
with her and taken her back in his arms, but he had never forced a
woman to make love with him in his life, and the revulsion he felt at
the thought of doing so now checked him.

Sage
didn't stop running until she had reached the sanctuary of her car.

Once there, she turned the key in the ignition and locked
the doors, but she was shaking far too much to drive. Her body was hot
with sweat and fear. She wiped her trembling hands on her jeans,
grimacing as she did so. She was appalled by her own self-betrayal, her
almost total loss of self-control. She wasn't nineteen any more, for
God's sake, she told herself angrily as she set the car in motion at
last. What on earth had made her go overboard like that? She had enough
experience of her own sexual needs and those of the majority of the
heterosexual male sex to have been able to avoid that disastrous
conclusion to her run-in with Daniel.

It was no use telling herself that it was the shock of
seeing him so unexpectedly—it was no use telling herself
anything other than the truth, and since that truth was something she
didn't have the strength to face up to right now, the best thing she
could do was to blot it out of her mind, It wasn't as though she didn't
have anything else to think about… She smiled cynically to
herself, wondering how her mother would have reacted in similar
circumstances…

Would she have retained her ladylike self-control, her
calm self-assurance? Would she…?

Angrily she pressed down harder on the accelerator, trying
to use the car's swift responsive surge of power to drown out what she
was thinking. She would find some escape from her thoughts by pulling
up the opportunistic weeds in her mother's garden for the rest of the
day. She needed some physical activity to keep her mind away from
Daniel.

The next morning she came downstairs to find Faye pacing
the hall, her normally almost too bland sweetness of expression marred
by a deep frown.

Suppressing a faint sigh, not really wanting to hear any
more about her problems with Camilla, Sage stopped to ask, 'Is anything
wrong?'

'Yes… No… I've got to go out.
Camilla's gone down to the stables. Will you tell her when she comes
back?'

She was heading for the stairs before Sage could say
anything, moving so quickly and tensely that Sage stared after her
curiously.

What on earth was the matter with Faye? Her behaviour
these last few days had been so out of character, but, come to think of
it, that same charge could be laid against all of them
recently…

Without her mother's presence in their lives, all of them
seemed to be—to be what? Changing—or simply
exhibiting certain aspects of their characters under the stress of her
mother's accident?

Almost without knowing she was doing so, Sage found she
was walking towards the study and opening its door, breathing deeply
and exhaling the tension from her body, almost as though she found the
room a haven of some kind.

Her glance focused automatically on her mother's desk, and
she knew without having to question her own actions that the thought of
losing herself, of separating herself from the present and her own
problems in the past and the gradual unrolling of her mother's life,
was the panacea she sought to distance herself from the events of
yesterday.

In reading the diaries she could blot out her own
problems… her own memories… her own pain.

Muted sounds reached her from the rest of the house.
Somewhere Jenny was vacuuming… Faye was no doubt preparing
herself for wherever it was she was going, but these activities were as
distant from her as though they were taking place on a different planet.

She settled herself behind the desk and unlocked the
drawer containing the diaries, searching through them until she found
the right one.

As she turned the pages almost feverishly, she admitted to
herself that now her need to discover more about this stranger who was
her mother was almost overwhelmed by her urgent desire to lose herself
somewhere where she could escape mentally from yesterday morning's
debacle with Daniel.

Daniel. She shuddered involuntarily, her senses flooded by
her memories of the scent and feel of him. Under her fierce self-anger,
her outrage, her fury, and just as strong as her sense of self-loathing
was her awareness that some part of her must have always known of this
vulnerability lying within her like a trap set long ago and that part
of her had accepted what had happened with a sense of inevitability
that had left her with no resources with which to fight against her
emotions.

For years she had never given him a thought, would if
asked have claimed that she could barely remember the man, and it hurt
her very sharply that she, who had always demanded of herself far more
honesty than she had ever asked from others, should be confronted by
the knowledge that she had practised on herself the most dangerous and
foolish of all self-deceits.

The open pages of the diary swam in front of her, and she
focused fiercely on them, almost as though they were an actual physical
escape route and if her will-power were strong enough she could
actually force herself out of the present and on to those pages.
Nothing could ever totally banish from her mind the memory of her
surprise meeting with Daniel but perhaps for a time at least she could
find enough surcease from her thoughts to allow herself a little much
needed peace of mind.

She frowned fiercely as she read the first few words.

'
Today, young Vic left us
on the
start of his long journey to Australia. I drove him to Southampton.
Edward did not want to come with us. He finds travelling even small
distances in the car these days too painful. Don't ask me how he
managed it, but Chivers managed to find enough petrol from somewhere
for us to make the journey. Quite what we'd do without him I have no
idea. He's wonderful with Edward, who has found this cold, wet summer a
trial. The damp gets into his bones and makes his amputations ache. Ian
Holmes does the best he can, but, as he has explained to me, once he
starts prescribing morphine for Edward, which is the only thing which
can totally alleviate his pain, there is a very strong possibility that
Edward will become so totally dependent on the drug that he will not be
able to live without it. Chivers tells me that cod-liver oil is
marvellously good for all forms of rheumatism, and so somehow or other
he has persuaded Edward to have two large tablespoons of the filthy
stuff every morning.