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you so jumpy, and you know it. We both know it. Just being alone
with me in a car makes you as nervous as hell do you want me to
tell you why?'
'I know why! Because I hate the sight of you!' She got the keys to the
house, which her father had given her the previous evening, out of her
purse, and offered them to Simeon. 'Here, you let yourself into the
house. I'm going.'
'Still running away, Juliet?' His grey eyes glittered scornfully and she
bit into her inner lip, forcing herself to calm down, to sound perfectly
confident. She must not let him see any sign of weakness, of
uncertainty; he would seize it and use it to his own advantage.
'I have to get back to London I want to see my mother and
stepfather when they arrive there,' she said in a quietly rational voice.
'They flew home last night, but I haven't been able to get in touch with
them yet, and we have a lot to discuss.'
'So do we!'
She shook her head, somehow managing a little smile. 'We've said all
we had to say, Simeon. I don't want to...' She broke off, a jab of alarm
hitting her, as he closed his eyes and swayed back against the car, his
skin very pale. 'Sim!' she said, her arm going round him to support
him. 'What is it? Do you feel faint?'
He leaned on her, the weight of his lean, muscled body quite
surprising, and murmured incoherently. 'Mmm...'
She looked around in desperation, in the hope of spotting her father,
or the woman from the village who worked in the house and who had
arrived that morning just as she was leaving, but there was no sign of
anyone around.
'Can you walk to the house, if I help you?' she asked him, wondering
if she should get him back into the car and drive him back to the
hospital.
He seemed to force his eyes open, his body still heavy against her.
'What? Oh, yes, I think so.'
'Maybe I ought to drive back to the hospital!' she thought aloud, not
knowing quite what to do.
'No, I'll be fine soon, I'm better already,' he said, and he was
beginning to look better, it was true, so she slowly guided him
towards the house, took the keys he limply held, and unlocked the
front door. Simeon managed to stagger, with her help, into the
sitting-room and collapse on to a couch. He still had an arm around
her, and somehow he managed to pull her down, too. She was startled
by that, a little gasp escaping her, and was too late to stop herself
tumbling down beside him. He took her unawares; for a moment she
didn't understand, her blue eyes wide and confused as she stared up at
him.
It was she who was lying on the couch it should be Simeon, but he
was leaning over her, and she couldn't fathom how that had
happened. Only as his hands pressed her down among the cushions
on the couch did it begin to dawn on her.
She searched his face, suspicion now a certainty. The weak, helpless
look had completely vanished. This was the face she knew only too
well, the hard, determined face of the man who had wrecked her life
once before already and was apparently intent on doing it again.
'You aren't feeling faint at all!' she accused him, flushing to her
hairline.
Simeon watched her back with a mockery that made her feel like
screaming.
What a fool she had been! Hadn't she learnt by now never to trust him
an inch? He wasn't ill. He hadn't been feeling faint; it had all been
acting. It had all been a trick to get her into the house, on to this
couch, all alone here with him, and it had worked perfectly.
'I wasn't standing outside my own house arguing the point with you,'
Simeon said, quite unashamed of his cheating.
'You lied to me!'
'I didn't tell you anything! I shut my eyes and leaned on you and you
jumped to conclusions.'
'You meant me to!'
'I had to talk to you. You were going to run away again, and I couldn't
let you.'
'I am not making some cold-blooded bargain with you just so that you
can keep Chantries and 1 can make some money. I don't need money
that much. I don't need it at all.'
'And I don't need Chantries,' he said in a deep, harsh voice, making
her eyes widen in shock and disbelief.
'What do you take me for?' she burst out, trembling with rage, white
with it. 'What sort of fool do you think I am, if you imagine I'm going
to believe that for one instant!'
'I'm more of a fool than you are,' he said, his smile bitter with a
self-derision that made her wince. 'If I wasn't I would have come after
you when you drove off with your London boyfriend. I'd have
crashed into your flat, beaten the living daylights out of him, and
dragged you off down here by the hair and made you give me what I
wanted!'
'Nothing would have made me!' she furiously insisted.
His eyes were wry. 'Be honest with yourself. You know I could have
got you into bed, and I wouldn't have had to use force.'
She went crimson, her lips parted to shout a denial at him but no
words came out; she was unable to lie but not prepared to make any
dangerous admissions.
She didn't need to; he read her expression and smiled crookedly. 'Yes.
You and I have always felt that attraction, haven't we? Our minds
may not always understand each other, but our bodies seem to. But I
didn't follow you, because I was paralysed just as I was when you
ran out on me the first time.'
She seemed to stop breathing, she couldn't swallow, her mouth dry
and her ears deafened. What did he mean? Was this another lie,
another scheme to make her weaken, give in to him?
'The morning after our wedding, when I woke up and found you gone,
it was like being pole-axed,' he said slowly, grimacing. 'At first, I was
going to go after you. I wanted to get you back, and I felt like a swine
after the way I'd treated you the night before. I knew why you had
run. Of course I did. And I felt as guilty as hell -'
'You were!' she muttered, and he didn't argue, just frowned, nodding.
'Yes I was old enough to know better, I have to take all the blame.
But it was more complicated than that. I sat in my car arguing with
myself for hours, in a country lane a few miles away, trying to make
up my mind what to do, but there was something holding me back,
stopping me from moving. It wasn't just the guilt, or the anger, it was
worry over you. You were so young, too young to realise what
marriage meant.'
'I knew what it meant! I was young, yes, but not that young!' she said
huskily. 'That wasn't what made me run away. You've admitted it
yourself you drove me away, you were never in love with me! You
hated me. You wanted to hurt me, you were furious with me because
you felt you had been forced to marry me.'
'I was angry because we had been forced into a shotgun marriage,'
Simeon said roughly. 'I didn't think you were old enough, or in any
way ready, for a real marriage.'
'You didn't want to marry me at all!' she cried out, the deeply
embedded hurt of it in her blue eyes.
'I hadn't thought of marriage,' he admitted in a heavy, reluctant voice.
'That's true. For heaven's sake, you were a schoolgirl! I was feeling
guilty enough because I knew I wanted you like hell and you were
just a kid. I kept telling myself to keep my hands off you, but you had [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]

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