Out of The Night

And as for this fiancé of hers…didn’t he realise how much she needed him with her? Didn’t he realise how easily he could lose her? Didn’t he care?

He certainly hadn’t cared enough to make love to her. The thought slid into his mind like a serpent. He shook his head like a swimmer trying to clear water from his eyes, as he tried to cope with the complexity of his thoughts and feelings.

He was in danger of falling desperately in love with a woman he had only met once, a woman moreover who was in love with and engaged to another man, a woman who had given herself to him so sweetly and so wantonly that the memory of how she had felt in his arms still stirred his senses and his body.

She was plainly terrified of her fiancé discovering what had happened. She must love the man…little though he obviously deserved that love.

Fate had thrown them together once, and now it had chosen to throw them together a second time. Was it—was it really a piece of deliberate self-deception on his part to allow himself to think that two such chance meetings must be more than mere coincidence, that perhaps…

That perhaps what? That she would break her engagement and turn to him? It shocked him to discover how much that thought pleased him… How much he wanted to feel her in his arms again, to hold her, to love her… What was happening to him? When Jolie had deceived him, he had decided grimly that no woman would ever do so again, and yet here he was, virtually on the point of admitting that he wanted a woman who was engaged to someone else. He ought to despise her, not want her.

Perhaps if she hadn’t been engaged… But she was, and it went against every principle he had for him to want a woman who was already committed to another man. Emotionally committed, maybe—but sexually…

Sexually she had turned to him, as a substitute for her fiancé. The fiancé who she had claimed was already her lover—but he knew otherwise. If she had lied about that, couldn’t she have lied about her reasons for making love with him?

He was clutching at straws, he told himself grimly, looking for something that didn’t exist. At least, not on her part.

Hadn’t he learned his lesson the first time? Hadn’t he learned then that the female sex was possessed of a natural facility for deceit?

But she had seemed so different, he reflected broodingly; in his arms she had made him feel… She had made him feel what? That their coming together, unconventional, reckless though it might have been, had been brought about by a force too strong for either of them to withstand? Daydreams…fantasy…fiction… If he had thought there was something special, something rare and to be treasured about what they had shared, then she had not shared that feeling. For her he had simply been a physical substitute for another man.

A man who she had claimed to him was her lover, when he knew quite categorically that he was not. Why had she lied about that?

CHAPTER FIVE

DOWNSTAIRS in the kitchen, Emily tried to concentrate on the final preparations for dinner, but her mind refused to stay on what she was doing.

Matt, here. She started to tremble and had to replace the heavy saucepan. Why—why had fate decreed such a horrible coincidence?

Just once, once in her life she had behaved in a way that was totally out of character, and look what had happened. Other people did things that were far more reckless than what she had done; other people behaved foolishly, dangerously, and got away with it. But when she did something against all her beliefs, both moral and emotional, far from getting away with it, far from being able to push the entire incident to the back of her mind, with a shudder of relief that she had escaped unscathed, she was confronted by her partner in that shockingly wanton intimacy and forced to live side by side with him in her uncle’s home. Forced into fresh deceit in order to protect herself from the consequences of her stupidity.

Had he really imagined that she would be willing to enter into a casual sexual liaison with him? His conversation had indicated as much. Hot, shaming colour stung her face, and her hands trembled as she picked up the saucepan. It was entirely her own fault if he had drawn the wrong conclusions about her. Their coming together, so unexpected, so intense, so almost magical when viewed from the distance that now separated her from it, had taken on in her memories and emotions an almost fairytale-like quality, as though it had been something special, something predestined, a special gift which fate had given her. Maybe they had not loved one another—how could they without any knowledge of one another? But there had been tenderness in his hands on her body; his desire had been warmed and softened by that tenderness and by his consideration of her and her own needs, and she in turn had felt such awe, such pleasure when she had touched him that it had been as though she had been waiting for him all her life. Thus she had reasoned that, although what she had done went against all her strongest beliefs, it had somehow been a rare and special experience which had enriched her whole life.

Now, though, those rosy veils of self-deceit had been ripped from her, and she was forced to confront the truth. She had allowed a total stranger to make love to her without giving a single thought for what she was doing. She had thought naïvely, once she knew she wasn’t pregnant, that she had nothing further to worry about. How wrong she had been.

Bitterly she wondered what her great-uncle would think if he knew the truth about the man he had welcomed into his home. How many other women had there been before her with whom Matt had shared similar encounters?

Nausea burned her stomach, making her shudder. It was no use trying to convince herself that she had been an innocent victim. She had gone willingly enough into his arms. It was no wonder he had assumed that she would be equally willing to do so again.

If she hadn’t pretended that Travis was her fiancé… Her conscience niggled at her. She hated lies and deceit—but what choice had she had? Even so, the momentary look of shocked bitterness in his eyes when she had announced her engagement had caught her off guard and made her wonder if, after all…

If what? If he shared her own ridiculous memories of those hours they had spent together—hours when reality had been suspended and for that short space of time they had forged a bond, shared a rapport, known something so rare and precious that the mere memory of it would warm the coldest days of her life?

How ridiculous she was being. He had shown her the real nature of their intimacy; and if she found that reality bitter and unacceptable then that was her fault and not his.

Food was the very last thing she wanted, she recognised half an hour later, toying with her meal while her uncle talked animatedly to Matt. Of the three of them, only her uncle seemed to be really enjoying his meal. He was basically very much a man of his age and upbringing, treating her sex with courtly politeness and warmth and finding only in male company the mental stimulation which was now bringing a sparkle of keenness to his eyes as he talked enthusiastically to Matt about his own years as a don.

Listening to them, Emily realised that Matt had once been one of her great-uncle’s students and that it had been her great-uncle who had recommended that he be approached to fill the Chair which had recently become empty. Emily knew that Matt was young to be chosen to fill such a post, and, no matter what his morals might be, as an academic he must be brilliant.

He was certainly tactful, she acknowledged, watching, as he listened to her great-uncle, adding only the odd comment to the conversation. He seemed to understand and accept the older man’s need to talk, in no way appearing irritated at his domination of the conversation.

Emily’s previous experience of her uncle’s fellow dons was that they were in the main an ego-ridden species, rather like a clutch of self-orientated young children in their need to outdo one another.

Once, forgetting for a second her own miseries, she happened to glance at Matt while her uncle was discoursing on one of his pet, and rather outdated educational theories. No touch of boredom shadowed Matt’s concentration as he listened to the older man. Instead she saw respect, touched with understanding and humour, and s

omething deep inside her seemed to contract achingly as though someone had gently touched a sensitive spot and brought to life an alien flutter of emotion.

She quelled it immediately. Why, if he had to reappear in her life, destroying her peace of mind, making her confront her own actions and feelings, couldn’t Matt behave in such a way as to make it easy for her to feel contempt and dislike for him, instead of one moment filling her with fear and dislike and the next so unexpectedly showing her gentleness and compassion that he left her feeling utterly confused and helpless?

Why did fate have to intervene so unkindly in her life and give her this unwanted insight into his personality, showing her a man mature enough, caring enough, to recognise the small vanities of an older, and probably less able colleague, and to tactfully and generously help to preserve them?

She got up from the table almost clumsily, causing both her uncle and Matt to look up at her. Her uncle, she saw, was frowning vaguely, as though he had forgotten she was there.

‘I wanted to do some more work on your notes, Uncle John,’ she told him, deliberately avoiding looking at Matt. ‘I’ll take your coffee through into the study for you, shall I?’

‘Yes, a marvellous idea.’

Matt was standing up, walking over to the door and opening it for her, she recognised numbly. She had no alternative but to walk towards him, her whole body tensing almost to the point where it was impossible to move, as she finally stood within inches of him and the sanctuary of the open door.

‘That was a lovely meal,’ he told her quietly. ‘While you’re making the coffee, perhaps I could clear the table for you.’

Emily couldn’t quite hide her surprise. She gave him a quick, startled glance that betrayed how unused she was to such consideration. If they hadn’t already met—if she hadn’t already known… If they were in truth strangers, just by watching him and listening to him tonight she must have been in intense danger of—of what? Falling in love with him? That was the kind of thing teenagers did, not grown women.

Her uncle had turned round, to see what was delaying Matt’s return to the table. ‘I was just offering to repay your niece’s wonderful cooking by helping with the washing-up,’ he explained easily.

‘Good heavens, no—there’s no need for that,’ Uncle John told him before Emily could speak. ‘That’s women’s stuff, my dear boy. Best leave Emily to get on with it. Very good at that sort of thing, my niece.’

Emily saw the way Matt frowned, the look of disdain that darkened his eyes for a moment as he looked at her uncle.

‘Actually, I do prefer to wash this particular dinner service on my own,’ she said quickly. ‘It’s very old and very fragile, and I need my full concentration to make sure none of it gets damaged.’ Something she wouldn’t have a hope of giving the washing-up with Matt standing by.

She could see that Matt’s mouth was still compressed, as though he wanted to argue the matter further, but it was only when she had actually escaped to the kitchen that it struck her that this offer might not have been as altruistic as it had appeared. That perhaps he had wanted to get her on her own so that he could…

What? Persuade her to go to bed with him? When she had first met him, his straggly beard and unkempt appearance had hidden the truth from her, and that truth was that Matt Slater was an extremely attractive man, the kind of man that few women would be able to resist. She was quite sure that if he wanted a sexual partner he would have very little difficulty in finding one. Of course, she was here on the spot, and it would be very difficult for him to invite a woman to spend the night with him while he was living here with her uncle. But tonight, listening to him, he hadn’t come across as a man so unable to control his physical needs that they would drive him to propositioning a woman who had made it plain that she did not want a sexual liaison with him.

And she had made it plain that she did not. But hadn’t she also previously equally intensely given him the impression that, not only was she sexually available, but also that she was sexually eager and desirous of making love with him.

When she took the coffee into the study, both men were deep in conversation, but that didn’t stop Matt from getting up and taking the tray from her. For a brief second of time his fingers touched hers, an electrical contact that twisted her stomach in knots of frightened acknowledgement of how much that touch affected her.

She was trembling when she escaped from the room, as much from the shock that that jolting surge of awareness had given her as from the stripping, caustic look Matt had given her. It was as though, in that short space of time, he had looked into her soul and seen what only she had the right to know lay there; as though he had confronted her mentally and emotionally, demanding that she acknowledge her reaction to him.

But why? Male pride? Physical desire?

She tried to dismiss both Matt and her own reaction to him from her mind as she washed up. It was true that washing the valuable china did require complete concentration. It took her a long time to complete her task and put everything away; so long in fact that, instead of going into her small office to work as she had planned, she decided she might as well go straight to bed.

None of the rooms in the old-fashioned house had their own private bathrooms, something which had never bothered her in the past since her great-uncle used the bathroom closest to his room, and she used another at the other end of the landing; but Matt’s room lay in between the two bathrooms, and she couldn’t help wishing that it were possible for her to undress and use the bathroom, all within the privacy of her closed bedroom door, rather than having to walk down the landing wearing her old towelling robe.

But when half an hour later she opened her bedroom door, she found the landing reassuringly empty; the two men were obviously still downstairs talking.

How very indicative of the differing attitudes of men and women to the kind of intimacy she and Matt had shared it was that, while she hadn’t stopped agonising over the incident since the moment she had opened the front door and seen Matt standing there, he seemed to have no problem at all in dismissing the whole thing from his mind and spending the evening listening to her uncle’s conversation with every evidence of relaxation and enjoyment.

The landing was still empty when she opened the bathroom door a little later; she might have been completely alone in the house. Beneath her fear, her anguish and the loss of her self-respect lay an odd strand of sensation she couldn’t entirely analyse, and it was only later when she was lying in bed trying to sleep, but in reality tensing, waiting for the sounds that would herald Matt’s arrival upstairs, that she managed to isolate and recognise that odd sensation for what it was.

When she did, a sharp shrill of self-disgust coiled through her. Disappointment! How could she possibly feel disappointed? She didn’t want Matt to think she was sexually available, did she? She didn’t want him to believe that he could casually resume the intensely intimate relationship they had shared for those few brief hours? Of course she didn’t. So why was she feeling like this—why was her memory playing tricks on her by causing her to recall the delicious safe, warm, loved sensation she had experienced held in Matt’s arms?

Loved—what nonsense; Matt hadn’t loved her, nor she him. What was the matter with her? Was she so unable to face up to the unpalatable reality of her own behaviour that she was now seeking to cloak it in some shadowing protective cloak of emotion, trying to pretend that there had been more to it than a mere sexual coming together?

Angrily she turned over on to her stomach, trying to dismiss the alien emotions and feelings crowding her brain and body. She didn’t want Matt here, invading her life, disturbing her peace, forcing her into deceit. She didn’t want him reminding her of what she had done, and most of all she didn’t want him here because of the way he made her feel, both about herself and about him.

She was a fool, she derided herself silently. A woman who gave herself sexually to a stranger because she had suddenly and inescapably realised that life was

passing her by. And then she had compounded that folly by weaving idiotic, impossible daydreams around him, so that, when she was confronted by the reality of him, he had torn through the delicate, clouding veils of self-protection she had thrown up around herself and her actions, making her see what had happened with all the stark bleakness of that reality. He had taken away from her her sheltering, protective dreams; had stripped their coming together of the soft romanticism in which she had shrouded it, with his careless assumption that she would be happy to enter into a relationship with him based entirely on sexual need.

It had shocked her how much that had hurt, so that in that one split second she had realised how far she had actually allowed herself to travel down a road which she had had no right to enter at all.

From that one brief union they had shared, she had started to build up a store of fantasy, of ‘maybe’s, of impossible dreams, all the more comforting because they had been impossible. Now those dreams had been completely destroyed and it was no longer possible for her to cloak the raw reality of what she had done with the saving grace of imagined mutual caring and respect, with the tiny seeds of hope and tenderness which, carefully cherished, might have one day turned into love.

So she had comforted and consoled herself, free to put the incident safely behind her and to allow herself the luxury of pretending that given different circumstances, more space, more time, they might just possibly have established a proper relationship.

Now all that was gone. To Matt she had simply been a willing, anonymous partner in the sexual act they had shared. He was quite willing to extend that partnership, as he had made plain, but she was filled with revulsion at the thought of what she had done, of how she had broken all her own rules and beliefs.