'I shouldn't have made love to you like that,' he said grittily. 'I had no right. If I'd known that you were a virgin…'
Of course he wouldn't have made love to her if he'd known, Christy acknowledged. He had expected her to be as experienced as he was himself; he had desired her and had felt free to want a woman who had other lovers, in a way he had not felt free to want her seventeen-year-old self. Sickeningly, she wondered if he thought she would expect some sort of commitment from him now, and if he was trying to warn her off. The humiliation of it struck right through to her aching soul.
'It does take two, Dominic,' she told him brittlely. 'I shouldn't have let you. You'll have to put it down to my frustration at losing David…'
'Losing him?'
'Yes, he and Meryl have gone to live in the States.'
'You mean you bargained for him with your virginity and now that he hasn't taken the bait, you decided you might as well get over your physical frustration with me, as well as with anyone else.'
It sickened her that he could think such a thing of her, but it offered her an escape route with her pride intact, so she acknowledged his words with a brief inclination of her head.
'We were both using one another, weren't we?' she suggested with a tight smile. 'I suspect that I was no more than a substitute for Amanda.'
'Amanda's looking for marriage… a second husband. I can't give her those things.'
He sounded almost abstracted, as though Amanda's wants were of very little importance to him, but Christy knew better. Sick at heart, she turned away from him.
'I think I'd better go…'
He seemed reluctant to move.
'You… I…' He frowned and turned to look at her. 'If I hurt you in any way…'
Christy knew what he meant and her face burned. He was, after all, a doctor, but she still felt humiliated that he could revert to a professionalism so soon after arousing her to heights that still lingered inside her.
'I'm fine,' she told him shortly. 'I want to go home, Dominic'
'I'll take you.'
It was something of a shock to discover that she had been with him for a little more than an hour. The outside light burned over her parents' front door, but there was no sound from their bedroom as she tiptoed past. That was just as well; it would have been very difficult to find an excuse for her ruined dress. When she had taken it off she packed it away carefully in its box, so that no one else could see it.
Her body ached slightly now, but it was a pleasurable, voluptuous ache, an ache in fact, that reminded her body of the pleasures it had known and that held out the lure of repeating them.
Only in her case there would be no repetition; she knew that. Dominic had simply used her, but she couldn't wholly blame him; after all, she had made no attempt to stop him, had she? Indeed, some people might say that she had actively encouraged him.
CHAPTER NINE
« ^
Somehow life went on, although to Christy, in a daze of misery and pain, it seemed to have become something to be endured rather than enjoyed.
Her mother was now spending several hours a day out of bed, and Christy was at great pains to be unavailable whenever Dominic called at the house.
The shock of his arrival the day after the Valentine Ball still lingered with her. She had expected that he would be as eager to avoid her as she was him. She had told him then, without giving him the chance to speak to her, that she didn't want to see him again. She couldn't have borne him guessing how she felt about him and pitying her for it.
Luckily the hire company had been able to get the dress repaired, and now, if she was sensible, she would put the entire events of that night right out of her mind.
The only trouble was that no matter how firm she was with herself during the daytime, at night in her dreams she lost complete control, and dreamed of Dominic again and again, often waking up with tears still damp on her skin. Only this morning her mother had remarked on her wan expression and loss of weight, commenting that anyone would think that she was the one who had been ill.
Soon her mother would be able to manage without her. Originally Christy had contemplated staying in Setondale and finding a job in either Newcastle or Alnwick, but that had been before she had realised that Dominic had come home.
She knew that her parents were perturbed and concerned by the abrupt change in her, but although once or twice her mother had tried to bring the conversation round to Dominic, Christy had fobbed her off. The way she felt about him was far too painful to discuss with anyone else.
Perhaps if Meryl had not been away in Los Angeles, she might have been able to talk to her. Only this morning Christy had received a letter from her confirming the date of the baby's expected birth, and telling Christy that David had still had no success in replacing her. It was too late now to acknowledge that she would have been wiser to have gone with them. She had made her decision with the best intentions.
The end of the month brought fresh snowfalls, and the knowledge that their lovemaking was not going to result in a child. While logically she knew she ought to be relieved, and that she had been a fool to take such a risk, deep down inside Christy was aware of an atavistic sense of loss and failure, as though somehow in not conceiving the child of the man she loved she had shown herself to be less of a woman.