‘Yes… they… Daddy gave it to me for my birthday.’
‘Oh, yes, I suppose I should have guessed.’ The sardonic tone of his voice made Philippa flinch a little. She shivered, suddenly feeling cold and very unsure of herself. He didn’t seem the same Blake somehow.
‘Look, you’d better come in and tell me what all this is about,’ he told her, frowning as he turned away from her and opened a door off the hall.
The sitting-room that lay beyond it was sparsely furnished and pin-neat; a book lay open on the desk, an anglepoise lamp illuminating it.
‘Oh, I’m sorry—were you working?’ Philippa apologised awkwardly.
Blake’s mouth twisted. ‘Typical Philippa,’ he commented. ‘Showing us all how well she’s been brought up, how nice her manners are… how good she is. My God, you aren’t real!’ he exploded suddenly with such violent intensity that Philippa tensed against it. ‘You can’t be,’ he added as he turned round and stared angrily at her. ‘You arrive on my doorstep talking some nonsense about needing my help and then you——’
‘I do need your help,’ Philippa told him. ‘Daddy won’t let me go to university…’
‘Surprise, surprise,’ Blake responded cynically. His mouth curled downwards when he saw her face.
‘Oh, come on—you must have known it would happen… The car, I take it, is your reward for toeing the line, for doing what he wants…
‘What are you really doing here, Philippa—what is it you really want from me? Or can I guess?’
He was beginning to frighten her now; he wasn’t like the Blake she knew at all.
‘I—I’ve already told you,’ she stammered. ‘I… I wanted to talk to you… to ask for your advice.’
‘My advice?’ The harshness of his laughter hurt her ears. ‘So you want my advice, do you? Very well, I’ll give it to you. My advice is that you stop trying to deceive yourself and face up to reality, but then you don’t like reality, do you, Philippa? You’d much rather be Daddy’s little girl, shielded from all the unpleasant things in life like having to make decisions and having to do without a new dress every week, pearls round your neck and everything else he provides you with. That’s what you really want, isn’t it, Philippa…?’
‘No, of course it isn’t,’ Philippa denied. His attack shocked and hurt her. She’d had no idea he could be like this, speak to her so brutally… as though… as though he didn’t even like her, never mind…
Tears started to fill her eyes but she tried to blink them away.
‘I do want to go to university, but…’
‘But what?’
‘But I can’t,’ she told him shakily. ‘Not without my parents’ support.’
‘Why not?’ Blake demanded curtly. ‘Other people do… other people work to finance their education, but of course you could never do anything like that, could you, Philippa…?’
He took hold of her hand and examined her pretty french-polished nails, stroking the softness of her skin, but there was nothing loving and tender in his touch, nothing remotely approaching desire.
‘No,’ he said under his breath, more to himself than to her, or so it seemed to Philippa. ‘No, you couldn’t——’
‘Yes, I could,’ Philippa cut in painfully, hating the way he was looking at her, the contempt she could see, hear and almost feel in his attitude towards her. ‘I could work… I could…’ Her voice died away as she saw the way he was looking at her, saw her dreams being destroyed in front of her, consumed in the ice-cold fire of his anger, crumbling beneath the crushing weight of his rejection of her.
‘Blake…’
There was no mistaking the appeal in her voice, even she herself could hear it, and she flinched from it, mortified by what she was revealing but helpless to stop it.
‘No…’ Blake told her thickly, shaking his head. ‘Oh, no… no. No, you don’t, Philippa…’ And then, with a harsh frown, he took hold of her, crushing her against his body so hard that the impact of his muscles against her body actually hurt, the sensation of the soft dark hair on his bare arms touching her own skin, the maleness of him overwhelming her to such an extent that she immediately panicked, fighting to break free of him, subdued only by the fierce pressure of his mouth as it took hers in a bruising, punishing kiss that was nothing like the tender, almost reverential embrace she had imagined.
The kiss was hot and hard and angry, bruising her lips, forcing their compliance, the thrust of his tongue parting them for his to take marauding possession of her mouth. Her breasts hurt from the pressure of his muscles against them, her legs were shaking, her whole body in a state of semi-shock.
The tears she would not allow herself to cry ran down inside her throat instead, clogging it with their salt taste.
‘What is it… what’s wrong?’ Blake demanded, his lips against her ear. ‘This is what you came here for, isn’t it…? This is what you wanted… ?’
‘No,’ Philippa denied desperately, trying to break free of him, but he refused to let her go.
‘Don’t lie to me,’ he taunted her. ‘I’ve seen the way you look at me… the way you watch me… the hunger in your eyes. But then of course you would lie, wouldn’t you, just as you’re lying about your reason for being here… just as you’re lying about not being able to go to university… ?’