‘No.’ His mouth twisted bitterly. ‘That wasn’t what you thought at the time, was it? Oh, I saw the way you felt... the way you rejected me.’
‘Not because you weren’t there!’ Debra told him, horrified that he should think that.
He went very still, his eyes dark and bright with self-contempt.
‘No? Why was it, then?’ he demanded harshly.
For a moment Debra couldn’t speak. Her own eyes were shadowed as the memories swept down on her, degrading, frightening memories of words, phrases, descriptions that had destroyed her joy in her own sexuality.
How could she describe those things to Marsh? How could she tell him?
‘I love you,’ he had said, and she had seen, felt, that he meant it. She hadn’t wanted him to love her and she had certainly not wanted to love him. She had been afraid of that love, resenting and rejecting it, and yet now suddenly she knew that it was more important to her than anything else in the world; that he was more important to her... Much more important than her own fears; than anything Kevin Riley might have said or done.
She was still touching his shoulder. She smoothed her fingers against it in a brief gesture of comfort and love.
‘It was because of Kevin Riley,’ she told him unsteadily. ‘Because of the things he said.’
She looked up at him, her gaze direct and steady.
‘It was as though he had been in the room with us when you... when we... It was as though suddenly all men must share his thoughts, his feelings... as though the words, the way he described us... our intimacy was the way that you must think and feel about me.’
She saw his expression and appealed, ‘No.. .please let me finish. I felt so degraded, so sickened... so... so dirty somehow. I couldn’t bear the thought that you saw me like that. As a body... anatomical parts... a piece of flesh to be used and then discarded, despised. I told myself it was my own fault... that I had known right from the start that I mustn’t get involved with you... that I mustn’t love you.’
She felt him flinch and told him huskily, ‘I was afraid, you see... I’ve always been afraid of loving someone too much... I thought I’d seen how intensely Leigh loved and how badly she got hurt. There was a boy at college I thought I loved... later I realised I had never really loved him at all, but it made me afraid, because I knew that I too could one day love like Leigh... too intensely, too demandingly, and so I told myself that when I was ready to marry I’d find a man I could like rather than love, a friend rather than a lover... I didn’t want my marriage to be like Leigh’s. I didn’t want to suffer the way she suffered when Paul left her.
‘You were right to call me a coward,’ she told him huskily.
‘No. No, I wasn’t.’ He was holding her now, cradling her, rocking her soothingly, his voice thick with emotion. ‘I thought it was just me. That you didn’t want me. I couldn’t see beyond my own egotistical needs. I didn’t even try to see past them. I loved you... wanted you, and deep down inside some part of me was furiously angry with you because you didn’t love me in return.
‘I’m so sorry about Kevin Riley. Oh, God, Debra, I’m so sorry.’
He was still holding her as carefully as though she were a piece of fragile china, she recognised, his body aligned slightly away from hers as though he was afraid of touching her sexually.
As she looked into his eyes she saw that he was afraid of doing so, that what she had told him had made him afraid of touching her, that his love for her was so great that he wouldn’t touch her, she recognised.
It was in this bedroom that she had first dreamed of him... that she had first imagined him as her lover, even if she had fiercely tried to deny those needs. This bedroom, which Kevin Riley had desecrated and destroyed, just as he had tried to destroy her, but out of love for her Marsh had created this haven of peace and warmth from that destruction.
Out of love for her.
‘Make love to me, Marsh,’ she whispered shakily.
He frowned as he looked at her, his body suddenly tense.
‘You don’t have to do this, you know,’ he told her harshly. ‘I love you...’
‘I need to do it,’ she told him calmly, and then added a little less calmly, ‘I want to do it... I want you’
She was already stepping back from him, unfastening the buttons of her blouse, her heart thumping frantically while her stomach tensed in knots of anxiety and apprehension.
‘Debra,’ Marsh protested rawly.
She ignored his protest.
‘Undress me, Marsh,’ she begged him shakily. ‘Please undress me.’
He was hesitant at first, pausing, watching her, his face set and grave.
She took hold of his hand, lifting it towards her body, watching the sudden darkening of his colour, her heartbeat quickening as his fingers brushed briefly against her skin.