‘I love you,’ she said again and this time she registered a slight stiffening of his body.
‘You don’t mean that, Julia,’ he muttered, struggling to hold back, body tense with the effort. ‘We don’t need lovelies. Let’s enjoy this for what it is.’
‘Do you think I’d be here like this if I didn’t love you?’ Julia moaned through kiss-stung lips, wanting to give herself to him, body and soul, in consummation.
He raised his head, body still as death. ‘Frankly, yes,’ he stated brutally looking down at their bodies so nearly conjoined, seeing the passion-swollen breasts, the small white hips covered by the broad saddle of his. ‘I want your body, Julia—and you want mine. There is nothing else.’
She caught at him as he began to lift himself off her: ‘Don’t go, please don’t stop.’
He paused. ‘Is that a retraction?’
Julia couldn’t believe that he could stop now, that he would deprive them both of satisfaction if she didn’t lie to him. He didn’t want her love—she could understand that—but to do this … ‘No.’
She felt the tortured shudder of his body and for a moment she thought he was giving in. Then, sweat breaking out on an impassive face, he pulled away and sat up, reaching for his trousers on the floor.
‘Oh God, I don’t believe you. You won’t make love to me because I said “I love you”? You’re incredible! Is this some new morality I haven’t heard of?’
‘Not new. Mine. You know the score, Julia, or you should.’ He was referring to her supposed experience. Now was definitely not the time to confess to none. She knelt up on the bed, the flush of their love-making still mantling her body. He, too, was still aroused, and moved stiffly as he dressed and walked over to poke viciously at the dying fire. Julia followed him, naked and pleading, her body gleaming as flames leapt anew in the grate.
‘Are you afraid? Is that it? You think I’ll make demands on you? Won’t you …’
‘No, Julia!’ he turned his back to her. ‘Don’t compound the error. Put on your clothes and go.’
‘Why, Hugh? Why?’ she asked quietly, not moving. ‘I didn’t ask for anything in exchange.’
‘No, but you expect it all the same; if not now, later,’ he said perceptively. ‘It was a mistake, Julia. I don’t want to get involved, and neither should you.’
‘It’s too late, I am involved,’ Julia moved around to confront him proudly, tossing her golden head. She would not allow him to make her ashamed of what she felt or what they had done. ‘I love you, Hugh … all of you, even as you are now … and there’s not a damned thing you can do about it.’
‘Put your clothes on,’ he said, ignoring her challenge, though the grey eyes had to wrench themselves away from the inviting loveliness before him.
She was tempted to say ‘make me’ but she sensed that confrontation was not going to work after all. Silently she pulled her clothes over suddenly chilled flesh. She gave the evocative hollow in the wide bed one last wistful glance.
‘All right, I’ll go,’ she said quietly. ‘But don’t think it changes anything. I love you. I’m not asking you to change what you are; I’m not asking you for pretty lies. Maybe I will get hurt, but that’s my risk, Hugh, not yours. You risk nothing.’
He closed his eyes as if he as in pain and for a moment Julia though she had reached him. But:
‘No, no more, Julia.’ It was said with such weary bleakness that Julia retired, defeated, without another word. Left the tall, broad-shouldered man shrouded by the shadows of his room, and by deeper, darker shadows, that she could know nothing about. Left him brooding, alone—as he meant always to be.
CHAPTER NINE
I MUST have no sense of occasion, thought Julia next morning as she lay abed contemplating another pure and frosty day, no sense of tragedy. She had slept like a log and her pillow was redolent with dreams rather than tears. By rights she should be feeling shattered, instead she felt oddly optimistic.
Oh, they had shared some beautiful moments up there in Hugh’s eyrie. Golden moments… glorious, unforgettable. Julia stretched languorously as she relived their deliciousness.
She simply would not accept his rejection. The fact that Hugh hadn’t continued to make love to her after her too-ready confession of love was actually in her favour. If he had not given a damn for her he would have gone ahead regardless. Julia knew that most men, given a willing woman, wouldn’t quibble about a few whispered love words. But Hugh cared too much for his own self-respect, and hers, to lie. And, too, he was afraid. Afraid of love and everything it entailed. Something had happened to destroy his faith in emotions. His rigid self-control, his obsession with privacy, his contempt for sentimentality, all these feelings were rooted in the past. They must be very deeply ingrained to have survived a long, loving apprenticeship with the Marlows. Julia had her own suspicions, but they could only be guesses.
She didn’t regret what she had done. She could no more have held back her confession of love than she could have stopped breathing. In the midst of joy and passion she had been true to herself. And because she loved him she could forgive Hugh his brutality, knowing it was her, Julia, he was rejecting, so much as the idea of love itself.
She frowned, and bounced determinedly out of her bed. There were still—she counted on her fingers—still seven days of her employment left. Surely in that time she could slip under Hugh’s defences, persuade him that she was mature enough to make the transition from friend to lover without threatening his emotional status quo. Let him then discover for himself the satisfaction of a close-bond with someone who loved him enough to enjoy giving more than taking.
But what if she was wrong about him? Julia worried as she dressed. What if he was truly incapable of giving anything of himself into a sustained relationship? She chewed her lip thoughtfully. If raw sex was all he could ever offer, could she settle for that, for being only a minor part of his life? But then, sex with Hugh hadn’t been raw, even if he had intended it to be so. He had tempered its heat with consideration and unselfishness. He had loved her with his body … surely at some level he was capable of loving her with his mind? She longed to make him happy, to bring him smiles and laughter, to fill the clinical corners of his carefully structured life with warmth. She wanted to drive away for even the grim emptiness that she had glimpsed in his face last night, as he turned her away.
Julia made herself slow down as she prepared and then cleaned up after breakfast. The croissants were softly crisp from the oven, the kedgeree a creamy-hot concoction of savoury goodness, the waffles chewy and sweet. She ate a double-helping herself, to curb her impatience. Don’t push, she told herself.
Hugh hates to be pressured. Take it slow, marshal your arguments, slay him with logic if not love. There was no logical reason that she and Hugh shouldn’t become lovers.
Monday was laundry day and Julia was washing up the last few dishes as Jean Brabbage sailed through the kitchen with another load of bed linen.