‘Yes, Sapphire and I have decided to give our marriage another try,’ Blake told him calmly.
‘Marriage. You told me you were divorced,’ Alan accused Sapphire. ‘When did all this happen? Why didn’t you say something when I rang?’
‘I wanted to tell you, Alan, but …’
‘I was hoping your father would put me up for the night. It’s too late to drive back to London now, and there isn’t a decent hotel in miles.’
‘You can stay here,’ Blake offered, stunning Sapphire with his offer. ‘There’s plenty of room. If you bring in your case I’ll take it upstairs for you—it will give you and Sapphire a chance to talk.’
Sapphire had expected Alan to refuse, but instead he walked out to his hired car and returned with an overnight case. When Blake took it upstairs Alan demanded, ‘What’s going on? When you left London you were going to marry me, now …’
‘I’m sorry, Alan, but I didn’t want to tell you over the phone. I thought you’d ring again before coming up here, and everything’s happened so quickly that …’
‘By everything I suppose you mean going to bed with your supposed “ex”,’ Alan interrupted crudely. ‘He’s obviously got something I don’t have … Oh, come on Sapphire,’ he added angrily when she tried to protest, ‘it’s written all over the pair of you. Well I’m beginning to think he’s welcome to you. You aren’t the woman I thought, that’s obvious,’ he added in disgust, ‘and if it wasn’t for necessity, there’s no way I’d stay here tonight. My sister was right it seems. She warned me not to get too involved with you.’
Alan’s sister was a domineering possessive woman whom Sapphire had never liked and she sighed faintly.
‘I’ve put your case in your room. The door on the right,’ Blake announced, coming back into the kitchen. ‘How long until we eat?’ he asked Sapphire, ‘I want to check on the mare and foal. Sapphire told you about her midwifery skills yet?’ he asked Alan. ‘She’s practically delivered him all by herself. Messy business too—breech birth …’
Alan had gone green and Sapphire suppressed a momentary flash of irritation against him. Poor Alan, he couldn’t help being so squeamish. If she didn’t know better she would have thought that Blake was deliberately trying to show him in a bad light. She frowned suddenly, remembering which room Blake had given Alan. That was Blake’s own room. Perhaps he had put Alan’s case there because he knew the bed was freshly made up, and after all there were plenty of other rooms for him to sleep in.
‘We’ll be eating in half an hour,’ she told him. ‘Alan, the bathroom’s first on the left if you want to use it.’
I
T WAS DEFINITELY
one of the worst meals Sapphire had ever endured. Alan had lapsed into a sulky silence, punctuated by petulant little-boy responses to her questions, designed to reinforce her guilt, but what was even harder to cope with was the proprietorial, and very obviously male-in-possession, stance adopted by Blake, who remained sublimely indifferent to the killing looks she gave him, taking every opportunity he could to touch her, or to look at her with such blatant sexuality that if she hadn’t known exactly why he was doing it, she would have been in serious danger of succumbing to them.
Afterwards both men accepted coffee, and the tense silence pervading the sitting room as they all sat drinking it made Sapphire heave a sigh of relief when Blake announced that he ought to go and do his final rounds.
‘We go to bed early in these parts,’ he told Alan blandly.
‘Yes, I’m sure with the livestock and …’
‘Oh that isn’t the only reason,’ Blake interrupted softly, watching Sapphire.
‘I thought you told me you hated him,’ Alan said
stiffly the moment they were alone, ‘and yet now, apparently you’re reconciled.’
For a moment Sapphire was tempted to tell him the truth, as she had been planning to, but what was the point now? It was kinder in the long run to let Alan have the pride-saving cleansing of genuine anger to sustain him, and it would be selfish of her to tell him the truth now, knowing that she could never marry him.
‘I made a mistake,’ she told him quietly.
‘But not as big a one as I made,’ Alan told her through his teeth. ‘I thought … oh what’s the use? I might as well try and get what sleep I can. I’m leaving here in the morning. I’ll have your office cleared out and your things sent on.’
‘Thank you.’ How stilted and formal they were with one another. Sapphire sighed. She wished they could have remained friends, but sensed that Alan’s sister would prevent that!
When she had finished clearing away from their meal Sapphire went upstairs herself. Blake was still outside, and a thin line of light showed under the door of the room he had given Alan, the bathroom door open.
After showering in the privacy of her own en suite bathroom Sapphire towelled herself dry, clicking her tongue impatiently as she realised she had left her nightdress on the bed. Thank heavens for central heating, she reflected self-indulgently, as she dropped her damp towel and walked through into the other room. The lamps on either side of the half tester bed threw a soft haze of peach light across the room, emphasising the subtle blues of the decor, her progress silent as she
wriggled her toes luxuriously in the thick blue pile of the carpet.
She was just picking up her nightdress when she froze in disbelief as the handle of her bedroom door turned. Clutching the thin silk to herself she stared as the door opened inwards and Blake walked casually in.
‘Blake!’ Her astonishment showed in her voice. ‘What are you doing in here?’
‘I am your husband,’ he reminded her tauntingly, ‘or is the maidenly shock because you were expecting someone else—your lover, perhaps? Sorry to disappoint you, but unless he wants to share your bed with me as well as with you, he’ll have to sleep alone tonight,’ Blake told her crudely.
Sapphire was too stunned to be embarrassed about her nudity, anger heating her blood to boiling point as she stared at him. ‘Alan would never …’ she began, only to be interrupted by Blake who drawled insultingly, ‘Oh surely that can’t be true, Sapphire? He must have wanted you once at least for you to be lovers, but not under my roof, and not while you’re wearing my ring, and just to make sure he doesn’t, I’ll be sleeping in here with you tonight.’
‘You can’t.’ The protest was out before she could stop it, her eyes widening with shock. ‘Blake, there are half-a-dozen bedrooms for you to choose from …’
‘But I’ve chosen this one,’ he told her grimly, adding, ‘Oh come on, Sapphire, I wasn’t born yesterday, you really didn’t think I was going to make it easy for you do you? You alone in one room, him virtually next door? When did you arrange for him to come here?’
He was across the room in four strides, gripping her upper arm with fingers that bit into the soft flesh, surprising a gasp of pain from her lips.
‘Blake, I didn’t arrange anything. I was as surprised as you to see him. Oh I knew he was coming to collect his car …’ Anger fired her eyes to deep blue-black as she added bitterly, ‘Why should I defend my actions to you? There’s no reason why I should be faithful to you, Blake, no reason at all.’
‘No?’ His face was white with anger. ‘Then perhaps I’d better give you one. Why didn’t you tell him you were coming back to me, Sapphire? Were you afraid he wouldn’t wait for you, is that it?’
‘I wanted to tell him in person, not over the telephone. Alan fully understands the situation,’ she lied, urged to utter the falsehood by some only dimly conceived knowledge that if Blake thought she still loved Alan, it would in some way protect her from him. This afternoon she had come dangerously close to succumbing to the raw masculinity of him; of succumbing to her own reluctantly admitted love for him, she told herself. If Blake discovered how she really felt she had no guarantee that he wouldn’t somehow manipulate her vulnerable emotions and her, using them to his own best advantage. She shivered suddenly, wishing she had not as her shudder drew Blake’s attention to her nude body.
In the lamplight her skin glowed pearly cream, her hair curling wildly round her shoulders, still damp from her shower, her face completely free of makeup.
‘How many times has he seen you like this?’ Blake
grated hoarsely. ‘How many times have you slept with him? How long have you been lovers?’
‘That’s none of your business,’ Sapphire protested, hot colour flooding her skin. ‘I don’t ask you about your … your love life.’
‘Love life!’ Blake laughed harshly. ‘Now there’s an antiquated term if ever there was one. I don’t have a
love life
, my dear wife, I learned the folly of that years ago, but I do have all the usual sexual desires … Like me to prove it to you?’
‘You’re disgusting.’ Sapphire flung the words at him as she pulled free of his grip.
‘You didn’t seem to think so earlier this evening,’ Blake reminded her softly, going back to the bedroom door where he turned the key in the lock and then removed it, putting it in his jeans pocket. ‘Just in case you have any ideas about going to lover boy while I’m asleep,’ he explained tersely.
What was the matter with Blake? Sapphire wondered bitterly. He seemed to have a fetish about her going to Alan. What would he say if he knew the truth? That Alan wasn’t her lover; that no man ever had been … She shuddered; her skin suddenly too warm, her body weak with the knowledge that there was only one man she wanted to make love to her. What would Blake say if she told him … if she asked him …
Shocked she pulled her thoughts back from the precipice on which they teetered. Hadn’t she learned anything at all from the past? Once before she had begged Blake to love her.
‘Don’t worry, you’re quite safe with me,’ Blake
drawled, watching her. ‘Unless of course, you choose not to be.’
‘Why on earth should I do that?’ Animosity flared between them; tension tightening Sapphire’s nerve endings.
‘Oh any number of reasons,’ Blake told her insultingly. ‘You’ve been up here several days … and it can sometimes be hard denying oneself, when one’s been used to …’
‘Stop it!’ Sapphire demanded, goaded almost beyond endurance, her cheeks scarlet with rage. ‘How dare you suggest that …’
‘That you’d be so hungry for sex that you’d turn to me?’ Blake finished coolly for her. ‘Why not? After all it wouldn’t be the first time, would it?’
He turned his back on her as he spoke, calmly pulling off his sweater and unfastening his shirt, leaving Sapphire seething with temper and pain. How could he throw that in her face? He always had been a cruel bastard, she thought bitterly, but she had never expected anything like this …’
‘Go on.’ His voice was amused rather than contrite. ‘Why don’t you throw something at me, if that’s how you feel.’
‘Go to hell,’ Sapphire told him thickly. ‘God, I hate you, Blake …’
‘Really?’ He paused in the act of unfastening his belt, sitting down on the bed, his eyebrows arching as he studied the warm curves of her body. ‘Then perhaps you ought to have a word with your hormones,’ he tormented blandly, ‘they seem to be getting the wrong message.’
Sapphire had forgotten her nudity, and she froze to the spot, the image of her own body faithfully reflected in the long pier-glass on the other side of the room. Her skin glowed milky pale, her breasts full and softly feminine, crowned with deeply pink nipples that betrayed all too clearly the correctness of Blake’s taunt.
‘I’m going to have a shower,’ Blake told her, standing up and shedding his jeans. Frantically Sapphire dragged her gaze away from the muscled contours of his body, not sure who she hated the most; Blake for tormenting her as he was doing, or herself for being so vulnerable to that torment.
‘You can always join me if you want to cool down.’ The mocking taunt followed him across the room as he closed the bathroom door behind him. Once he was gone Sapphire struggled into her nightdress. The fine pearl grey silk seemed to emphasise her curves rather than conceal them, the deeply decolleté, lace-trimmed neckline outlining the curves of her breasts in explicit detail. One thing she was sure of. When Blake came back from the bathroom he would find her deeply and safely asleep. As she lay down and pulled the covers over her, keeping as close to the edge of the bed as possible she wondered bitterly if he had come to her room deliberately to torment her, or if he genuinely did believe if he wasn’t there to prevent her she might have gone to Alan.
Letting him think that she and Alan were lovers was her only means of protection, she acknowledged, closing her eyes, her body tense. Once Blake found out they weren’t, it wouldn’t take him long to discover that
she still loved him and then she would be completely at his mercy.
Nothing had changed, she thought bitterly, forcing herself to breathe evenly, and then a small inner voice corrected her, one thing had changed apparently. Blake, for some reason, now seemed to find her physically desirable. Or was his desire for her simply a frustrated sexual longing for Miranda who presumably now shared her favours between Blake and her husband? Nausea, deep and wrenching, tore into her as Sapphire pictured them together. No, please God not that, she whispered squeezing her eyes closed as though she could blot out the pictures. She had been through all this once before and suffered all the torments of the damned picturing Blake with Miranda, imagining their bodies entwined in the act of love; sharing its heated ecstasy and its languorous aftermath—pleasures which had been denied to her, and she wasn’t going to endure them again. She
couldn’t
.
She heard Blake come back into the room and tensed as he snapped off the lamp, and pulled back the covers. The sarcastic comments she had expected about the way she was huddled on the edge of the bed never came, and to her chagrin within minutes of getting into bed, Blake appeared to be fast asleep!
As she struggled up through dense layers of sleep the first thing Sapphire realised was that at some time during the night she must have turned instinctively towards Blake, because now, instead of lying with her back to him, curled up on the edge of the bed she was
actually curved against his body, her head pillowed on his shoulder.
Luckily Blake was still asleep and therefore unable to witness her weakness. As she started to move away from him, the second thing Sapphire realised was that he was sleeping nude. Perhaps she ought to have expected it; but during the brief days of their marriage he had always worn pyjamas, the jackets of which he had invariably tugged off at some time during the night, she remembered. Lost in her thoughts; seduced into inert languor by the warmth of his body, she was reluctant to move, even while acknowledging that she should; surely there could be no real harm in indulging herself in these few brief seconds of pleasure. But her conscience prodded her, and unwillingly she started to move away.