Passionate Scandal

‘You’re still a virgin.’

‘I’m—what?’ Anger surged up from nowhere, brought on, she suspected, by the sheer shock of what had just taken place. ‘Y-you mean you’ve just put me through—that—because you think I’m still a virgin?’

That brought his arm away from his eyes, the guarded look in them overlaid by a sharp question. His face was pale, the tension in him clenching his lean frame.

Madeline climbed to her feet, her body trembling as she angrily straightened her clothing. Humiliation and embarrassment stung along her body; she had never felt so ill-used in all her life!

‘You used to hate it when I stopped too soon before,’ he explained. ‘I didn’t want to disappoint you this time.’

‘And what you did just now was supposed to make me feel better, was it?’ She sent him a bitter glance, ‘Well, let me tell you how I really feel,’ she muttered on a burst of fury which had been building over four long frustrating years. ‘I feel used! Used and manipulated! As I always did when I was with you!’

‘Madeline, I—’

‘I want to be loved, not relieved!’ she choked. Tears were burning at the back of the throat and her eyes and she looked away from him. ‘Loved, and wanted so desperately that you wouldn’t be able to stop no matter how hard you tried!’

‘I didn’t want to stop,’ he put in gruffly.

‘But managed it anyway.’ The short laugh was more a cry of scorn as she fumbled to do up her shirt buttons with fingers that trembled badly. ‘As always,’ she went on self-condemningly, ‘it’s Dominic who plays the tune and Madeline who dances to it!’ she scoffed at herself, then shuddered in sickening self-disgust. ‘You always did only have to touch me to have me panting for more, didn’t you?’ she accused him and viciously mocked herself.

‘It wasn’t like that,’ he sighed out wearily, sitting up to run an angry hand through his hair. ‘It was never like that. You were so young then, Madeline! Just eighteen, dammit!’

‘And now?’ she challenged shakily. ‘What am I now, Dom—four years older and therefore eligible for the next stage in sexual titillation?’

‘Don’t be so damned crude,’ he grunted, lurching grimly to his feet. ‘You enjoyed what we just shared, Madeline, and you know it.’

‘But we didn’t “share” anything!’ she cried, the tears spurting to her eyes again on a fresh burst of anger and ravished pride. ‘We never did “share”, and that’s just my point! You manipulated me to suit your own ends four years ago and you’re still trying to manipulate me now!’

Four years ago he had held her on a knife-edge of mind-blasting sexual frustration with his clever hot-and-cold tactics. Then, when she’d inevitably toppled over the edge, he’d had the absolute gall to be appalled by her! And this morning he had done the exact same thing, fooling her into that mad, crazy, beautiful experience only to blow cold on her yet again.

She couldn’t stand it. Not again. She should not have come back. She should never have set foot inside England again until she’d worked Dominic Stanton right out of her system with however many lovers as it would have taken to do it! But instead she’d held them all off, and secretly dreamed of Dom, of his touch of her skin, of his kisses and caresses.

God, she felt sick. Sick with herself and with him. ‘I don’t wish to see you again,’ she said as she pulled her thick coat around her. ‘Not in this way, anyway.’ Her gaze did a cynical run of the old boathouse. ‘You aren’t good for me, Dominic. You rob me of my self-respect. You always did.’

‘And what do you think you did to me?’ he threw back harshly.

‘I made a fool of you,’ she said. ‘And do you know what?’ she added. ‘For the first time in four years of feeling guilty about it, I’ve just come the conclusion that you damned well deserved it!’

CHAPTER TEN

‘EVERYONE has accepted,’ Nina remarked from the elegant secretaire where she sat shuffling through the replies to her wedding invitations. ‘Including all the Stantons,’ she added with smiling satisfaction.

‘And so they should,’ Edward Gilburn gruffed, ‘considering the way you went over there and flannelled around them all.’

‘I did not flannel!’ Nina protested. ‘I just thought it was best to give them all their invitations personally since they had to know that everyone else received theirs weeks ago.’

‘And very right it was, too,’ Louise put in, soothing her daughter’s ruffled feathers.

‘Did you see Dom?’ Madeline couldn’t resist asking the question, but hated herself for doing it.

But she hadn’t seen or heard from him since that awful scene at the boathouse over a week ago now. And the pained sense of loss she was experiencing felt as desperate as it had done four years ago.

‘Dom said he would be delighted to come to my wedding,’ Nina answered her.

Madeline waited, with bated breath, hoping that Nina was going to tell her that Dom asked after her, but she added nothing else, and on a sudden fit of restlessness she got up and walked over to stare out of the window. When she’d told Dom they were no good for each other, she had been right, she decided. These awful feelings at wretchedness were just not worth it.

‘Did you know old Major Courtney passed away last year, Maddie?’ her father said suddenly.

‘No!’ she gasped, turning around to stare at him. Major Courtney had been the local recluse, living in his tumble-down old house for as far back as Madeline could remember. The house and the man fitted together somehow. It didn’t seem right that he would be there no longer.