‘Before what?’ he challenged her softly.
Livvy stared at him, suddenly aware of how dangerously off the subject she had travelled and on to ground which she was discovering was riddled with hidden pot-holes and quagmires.
Even so, she refused to be cowed by the hard, mocking look he was giving her. Lifting her chin, she told him firmly, ‘Before my feelings.’
He laughed. ‘So what would make you commit yourself exclusively to one man. Love?’
The cynicism in his eyes made her heart ache, but she was not going to back down, no matter how much he derided her.
‘As a matter of fact, yes,’ she told him bravely.
He stared at her for a long time before saying roughly, ‘You’re either a fool or a liar, and kno
wing what I do know about your sex…’
He didn’t finish his sentence. He had no need to, Livvy reflected bitterly half an hour later as she drove her car down the farmhouse lane, still seething with the intensity of the emotions he had aroused in her.
What on earth had prompted her to expose herself to him like that? She had known before she opened her mouth what his reaction would be.
He might seem to have discarded his initial judgement of her as a promiscuous flirt, but she suspected that nothing could shift his entrenched and biased views of her sex.
As she turned out on to the main road, she admitted that she herself had been guilty of some bias. He had not liked it at all when she had met his final challenge by saying that, just because his own marriage had failed, it didn’t mean that there was no such thing as a happy, successful marriage.
‘What do you know about my marriage?’ he had demanded aggressively.
‘Nothing,’ she had admitted, ‘other than what you’ve told me. But it obviously didn’t work. Your wife…’
‘My wife left me for another man?’ he interrupted her harshly. ‘My wife only married me for one reason, and that reason was nothing to do with “love”. She had the divorce settlement worked out before the ink on the licence was even dry.’
His bitterness had silenced Livvy, her eyes softening with a compassion she couldn’t conceal. No matter how much she disagreed with his views and his attitude, it was impossible not to feel sympathy for the pain she could sense lying beneath his harsh words.
‘You must have loved her.’
The soft words were said before she could recall them, and she knew at once that they were a mistake, an intrusion…a potential catalyst to the powerful emotions he was fighting to control.
‘Loved her?’ His eyes had glittered dark with disillusionment and pain. ‘Loved her? No, but I thought I was in love, and she with me. I was wrong, though. What I had thought was “being in love” was in reality closer to lust—mere physical desire—but I was too young, and too idealistic, to recognise it at the time.’
The tone of his voice had made Livvy shiver. The words, ‘Then why did you marry her?’ stuck to her tongue like burrs to an animal’s fur, but despite their irritation she refused to utter them, caution overwhelming curiosity.
‘I know what you’re thinking,’ he told her. ‘Go ahead, why don’t you ask?’
Livvy had flushed at the scorn in his voice. ‘It isn’t any of my business,’ she told him quietly, putting down her coffee-mug and preparing to turn away.
‘No, you’re damn right it isn’t,’ he had agreed, ‘but I’ll tell you anyway… Sexually she was the most…’
Livvy hadn’t been able to stop herself; she had felt herself starting to flush, a deep burn of embarrassed and uncomfortable colour invading her body. It hurt hearing him talk like this, she had recognised. She had felt degraded somehow, not just by what he was saying, but by her own recognition of that sharp, plunging knife-turn stab of jealousy she had felt, that bitter awareness that she was not the kind of woman he could ever describe in those kind of terms, that her sexuality could ever have the power to entrap and hold a man against his will; and, along with her recognition of her pain and the reasons for it, had come bewilderment at her own reactions, at her even momentarily wanting to have that kind of sexual power, at wanting to be able to make him ache and burn with desire for her.
It had only lasted a second or so, a dangerous surge of primitive madness, soon banished to its rightful place.
She was not that kind of woman, nor did she really have any desire to be; and surely, if Richard Field had been foolish enough to get caught in that kind of trap, then he was not…
Not what? she asked herself shakily now. Not the kind of man who could appeal to her? Not the kind of man she could desire? Not the kind of man she could love?
* * *
She did her shopping, dawdling over it for as long as she could, stopping to have lunch in a café that overlooked a tree-lined square.
A small family were sitting at the next table to hers, the mother young and pretty, bloomingly pregnant, her two daughters, in the manner of Continental children, beautifully dressed and already touchingly and innocently aware of their femininity, allying themselves to their mother as they copied her actions, while at the same time enjoying flirting with their father while their mother looked on indulgently.