Savage Obsession

'So it seems. I'd appreciate it, though, if you could acquire one, too.'

His effrontery took her breath away and she opened her mouth on a howl of protest. But he covered her lips with a none-too-gentle hand and warned her darkly, 'Don't utter another sound until I've had my say.' Leaving her propped amid the pillows, her lips compressed but her chin at a de­fiant angle, he put the 'Do Not Disturb' sign on the outside of the door, tossed Allie's flowers and William's bound proofs on to the floor, and lay on the bed, his arms folded behind his head, ignoring her snort of outrage.

'I've been trying to figure your behaviour out ever since you came up with the stupid idea of a trial separation.'

'It was one of the most sensible things I'd ever done.' He might have commanded her to keep quiet, but he couldn't make her keep her mouth shut. And she wished he'd get off the bed. He was far too close. So she tacked on viperishly, 'You hadn't come near me in months. I could have been a lodger, an octogenarian one at that, for all the interest you showed in me.' She gave him a fulminating sideways glare then stared sniffily at the ceiling, her arms folded beneath her breasts. She hadn't finished with him yet—she had barely begun!

'I've explained why.' For the first time, there was a trace of weariness in his voice and Beth's heart twisted sickeningly as he went on, 'If you knew how guilty I felt, you wouldn't have needed to ask why.'

No matter what he was; never mind if he would always put Zanna first, she had to acknowledge that he had been sincere about that. There had been no mistaking the pain in his voice when he had told her how he had blamed himself during those dreadful months after the accident. Her taunt had been unnecessary and out of order, and, to make up, she said diffidently, 'How could I have known, if you didn't tell me? And if it helps at all, I felt the guilt, too. You'd married me to have children—primarily, at least. I felt I'd let you down. Knowing I was unlikely to conceive again made me feel a failure, inadequate.'

He twisted suddenly on the bed, forcing her to look at him.

'You should have told me. Correction.' His hard mouth indented wryly. 'We should have told each other. Talked it through.' His eyes softened; his mouth did, too, as he brushed his lips over the sud­denly sensitised skin of the shoulder her sleeveless nightgown left bare.

Beth shuddered helplessly. This confrontation wasn't going as she'd planned—she felt as if she'd been left in a mire of non-communication. If only they'd talked, not kept their guilt locked away inside themselves.

But that was all in the past, and they couldn't go back there, and he made that patently clear when he hoisted himself up on one elbow, his inescapable eyes on a level with hers as he informed her with studied patience, 'As I've been trying to explain, working out the motives for your behaviour has been beyond me. Until, that is, you came out with that hysterical spiel on the way here.'

'Hysterical?' she bridled, stung. 'It had nothing to do with what I was saying. You'd have been hys­terical, too, if you'd thought you wouldn't make it in time to give birth in the proper place!'

'Rather more than that, I'd say. I would have been having a few rather serious doubts about my role in life.'

Unwillingly, her lips twitched. And then she re­membered that jettisoning a husband was utterly serious. And, strangely, frightening, too. She sighed, very sober now, cold inside and, despite the peacefully sleeping baby, very alone. And Charles told her, 'It was only when you gabbled some non­sense about Harry being my son that I was able to put the facts together. Tell me, what exactly did you overhear, back in June?'

Nonsense? Beth's heart leapt then settled down to a sombre, heavy beat. She had heard what she had heard, and there was no way he could get round that. And, surely, he wouldn't want to, would he?

She ran the tip of her tongue over her dry lips, and husked out accusingly, 'She called you darling.'

'Is that all? She calls everyone darling.' He turned on his back again and closed his eyes, as if totally bored. Beth dug him sharply in the ribs.

'No, not all—not by a long chalk, and you know it.'

A small mew, followed by a hiccupping screech, had Beth scrambling down from the bed, lifting the tiny, protesting scrap of humanity from the cradle and scrambling back, Charles Aidan John tucked comfortably at her breast. And Charles muttered, 'Well, go on, then. Tell me.'

'I don't think this is the time or the place to be discussing the breakdown of our marriage,' Beth replied repressively. She would not let herself be upset. Not now. Later, perhaps. Or tomorrow. But not now.

Charles shifted round again, his eyes on the greedily suckling infant, his gaze slowly lifting to the softly vulnerable curve of her lips, the dreamy green of her eyes, and he said thickly, 'My God—I think I'm jealous of my own son!' And then he went on, taking in her fiery blush, 'When you took that job in France and told me you wanted a sep­aration, I nearly went out of my mind. Things had been going badly for us—I knew how much you wanted children. I think, on the whole, that desire was responsible for turning the tide in my favour when you agreed to marry me.'

'You said you wanted children, too. Hordes of them, to fill South Park,' she reminded him defen­sively, and he held up a quietening hand.

'Only because I knew how keen you were. I wanted you, only you. If you gave me children, great. But if you hadn't been able to I wouldn't have gone into a decline, believe me,' he told her drily. 'And I believed seeing young Harry, in our home, was the final straw, the thing that sent you away. I'd been responsible—in my own mind at least—for the way you'd lost your baby. And, for all we knew, lost all hope of having any more. I tried to make you believe that there would be more for you—more to comfort you than to ease my own conscience. I could see how Harry's presence was hurting you, making you bitter. I hadn't been able to touch you, you see. Partly because of my feelings of guilt and partly because I knew if we shared the same bed I wouldn't be able to keep my hands off you. I felt you needed time to come to terms with what had happened, without my making that sort of demand.'

She had been thinking about his words, words about wanting her, and only her, allowing them to linger on her mind like soothing balm, and about him saying he'd tried to comfort her, telling her there would be more children for her when, at the time, she'd believed he'd meant men! But his statement about the effect his son had had on her jolted her out of the dangerous fool's paradise. Of course Harry's presence had hurt, made her bitter and jealous!

&nb

sp; 'I was hurt because Harry was—is—your son,' she told him tightly, feeling the ache of loneliness and loss build up inside her again. 'I heard Zanna call him "our son", say she'd had to come to you again because the boy needed to get to know his father. Tell you she'd heard our marriage was over, which it was to all intents and purposes—and only you could have told her that. And I saw you together that night, in the nursery, and Mrs Penny said Harry was the spitting image of you, which he is, and—'

'Mrs Penny always did know more than is good for her,' Charles interrupted, lifting a hand to gentle away the tears she hadn't been able to prevent es­caping from beneath her closed eyelids. 'Don't upset yourself, my love. There really is no need. Because you do love me, don't you?'

The deep note of triumph in his voice made her shiver. And she nodded, too emotional now to speak, to even try to salvage the pride that had become so important to her.

He took the now sleeping baby from her arms and tucked him gently back in his cradle, then sat on the bed, pulling her into his arms, telling her huskily, 'I worked that out for myself, in between ministering to you while you were so gallantly pro­ducing our son and heir! From what you'd told me, I knew you couldn't have overheard all that con­versation, as I'd believed. If you had, you would have known that Harry is James's son, not mine! You left because you believed Zanna had come back to me, bringing our son, and I was going to turn you out.'

'James's son?' Beth lifted her face from the haven of his broad chest, her eyes incredulous. 'But she was having an affair with you—everyone knew how obsessed you were with her.'

He dropped his mouth to her parted lips, whis­pering against them, 'I never had an affair with Zanna. And as for being obsessed, I suppose I was, in a way. Obsessed by the need to keep her away from James.'