The earlier harmony she had felt they shared had been nothing more than an illusion, Charley told herself bitterly—a trick and a trap into which she had fallen by allowing Raphael to get under her guard. Too late to regret now the information she had given him about herself; too late to tell herself that she should never have listened to her senses and her body instead of her head, when they had whispered excitedly to her of their reaction to Raphael. Her head knew perfectly well that there could be no intimacy—of any kind—between her and Raphael, no matter what her foolish senses might have wanted to believe. All she could do was make sure that she didn’t make the same mistake again.
The garden covered several acres, and there were parts of it—like the part they were in now—that Charley hadn’t seen on her earlier visit because access to them was so overgrown.
Striding ahead of her, Raphael had come to a halt outside the ruins of what had once been a pretty garden temple.
‘Down here there is something I particularly want to discuss with you,’ he told her, indicating a set of steps that led downwards to a heavy wooden door. ‘But take care on the steps—they are damaged and slippery.’
Charley hesitated. She didn’t like underground places—never had done since she had been accidentally locked in the vicarage’s cellar as a child. But she knew she couldn’t refuse without making a fool of herself and showing a vulnerability she did not want Raphael to see, so she followed Raphael down the stone steps, trying to control her reluctance and anxiety as he unlocked the door.
Just the sound of it creaking back on its hinges when Raphael pushed it open was enough to increase Charley’s apprehension.
‘Down here is the chamber containing the mechanism for the fountains. I’ve had someone looking at it, and it’s still working, although the fountains and sprinklers themselves need repairing and restoring. Once they are in working order again they should prove a tremendous draw for visitors. One of the things I want to do—the only modernisation of the gardens I will permit—is the addition of lighting. The cabling for that will need to be put in at an early stage, and you will need to make arrangements for that.’
Charley nodded her head. He was quite right that specially designed lighting would enhance the garden.
‘It is my intention that the money brought in via future visitors to the garden will go directly to the town, for the benefit of its people—especially the young people, to provide them with the opportunity to learn new skills. There is no industry here, no work for the young, and without them the town will eventually die.’
His altruistic plans surprised Charley. They seemed at odds with her own judgement of him—or was it just her he felt didn’t deserve to earn a living?
Charley was just about to respond when she saw a small shadow flit past her out of the corner of her eye, followed by another.
‘What…?’ she began anxiously, but Raphael anticipated her.
‘It is nothing to worry about,’ he told her casually. ‘It is only bats. They have made a home here. If you come down here and look closely you can see them hanging up in the roof. We’ve obviously disturbed them.’
Look closely? Charley shook her head, and then whirled round as another bat flew past her, losing her balance on the crumbling stone as she did so.
Raphael must have moved quickly, because he had been several feet away from her when she had slipped and now he was holding her.
The bats were forgotten. All Charley could think about was her proximity to Raphael. Her heart was thudding into her ribs with a mixture of forbidden excitement and longing. She must not feel like this, she warned herself. She must not raise her head and look at him. She must not let her gaze rest yearningly on his mouth. She must not let her heart thud with anticipation and longing whilst she looked up into his eyes, her own eyes telling him what she most wanted.
She must not, but she was.
This was not what he should be doing, Raphael knew, but his hard grip on Charley’s upper arms still softened into a hold that was more a caress, the pads of his fingertips smoothing the soft leather against her skin. He could see the pulse beating frantically in her throat, inciting him to capture it with his lips and then trace his way up to her mouth. He’d already lifted his hand, preparatory to cupping her face so that he could hold her still beneath his kiss. What harm would one kiss do? At least then he would know.
Know what? That he wanted her? He didn’t need to kiss her to discover that.
Raphael was going to kiss her! Charley leaned helplessly towards him, an
d then stopped when he released her abruptly, almost thrusting her away from him.
‘I thought you said that your leg was fine,’ he said angrily. ‘If you are still having a problem with it you should have said so. The last thing I want is to have—’
‘To carry me out of here?’ Charley stopped him. She was shamefully close to tears, foolishly hurt by his anger and his lack of understanding. ‘Well, you needn’t worry. There’s nothing wrong with my leg. The bats made me stumble, that’s all.’
Carry her? The savage surge of physical reaction hardening his body at the thought of holding her in his arms increased Raphael’s fury—not against Charley but against himself. He could feel it burning through him, beating at the defences of his self-control: anger against himself for not recognising that she might be in pain; anger against himself for wanting her; anger against the strictures placed upon him because of what and who he was, forbidding him from living as other men did. Anger, but not rage. Not that feeling he had sworn he would never allow to possess him ever again—that wall of savagery that had once risen up inside him, sweeping over him like a red mist, obliterating reason and humanity, possessing him with its violence, forcing him to accept the cursed reality of what he had inherited, the reality of what he was.
That feeling, experienced once and never forgotten by him, was his dark shadow—always with him, always reminding him, a warning of what might lie ahead of him in his future if it wasn’t controlled. And who could say that it always would be? Who could say that it wouldn’t grow and take over like some progressive disease? Like the form of madness that it was? So that he ended up not only risking passing on his own tainted inheritance to a future generation but also, in the grip of his own madness, destroying those he should most protect.
Images he had kept locked away burst past the doors he had closed against them. His mother’s pretty sitting room, its air carrying her scent, the sunlight falling on the petit point that was her favourite hobby laid down on a small table, the chair on which she always sat whilst doing it beside the table.
Like a film inside his head Raphael could see himself reaching for that chair in a fit of anger—of madness—and then hurling it against the marble fireplace with such force that it had lain broken and splintered, its red silk seat covering resembling a pool of blood against the white marble.
No! The denial, silent and agonising, was wrung from deep inside of him, but Raphael knew that no amount of regret could take back what he had done in the savagery of his rage against his mother—the person who had loved him so very much and who had least deserved that rage. For the rest of his life he must be on his guard against that rage—against that madness ever possessing him again—and that meant controlling his emotions, not allowing himself to get close emotionally to anyone—for their own sake and protection.
CHAPTER SIX
IT WAS no use. She could mentally castigate herself as much as she liked for being too vulnerable to her emotions when she should have been listening to her head. Raphael was not someone she could afford to let her guard down around, Charley warned herself as she paused in front of the portraits of Raphael’s parents—painted just after their marriage, so Anna had told her when she had asked about them.