She controlled her rage for just as long as she could, which was only about as long as it took for James to drive away from the pub car park, and then her feelings exploded out of control. Her face contorted with intense anger as she demanded furiously, ‘Just what was all that about, James? How dare you treat me like a child, embarrassing me like that in front of Graham? Dragging me home for all the world as though…’
‘As though you were my wife,’ he supplied ironically, adding with menacing softness, ‘oh, but I thought that’s what you are. Forgive me if I’m in error, Jenna.’
‘I may be your wife, but I’m not your exclusive property,’ she threw at him, forced to take another tack. ‘What did you think I was doing with Graham, James? Going to bed with him?’
Too late she saw the dark glitter spring into his eyes as he turned to look at her. The smouldering rage she could sense banked down beneath the icy control he was exhibiting both frightened and exhilarated her. Shocked, Jenna realised that she wanted to quarrel with him, that she wanted to provoke him to the point where his control was shattered into pieces, where he was as vulnerable to his emotions as he made her vulnerable to her desires. It was an intolerable burden this mingling of anguish and hatred that rode her beyond the point where she was capable of thinking rationally never mind behaving rationally.
‘Is that what you want to do?’ he asked at last, ‘because if it is I——’
‘You’ll what?’ Jenna demanded hotly. ‘Punish me by abusing my body?’ She laughed wildly. ‘Haven’t you done that enough already, James? Do you really find it so impossible to believe that I might want tenderness as an antidote to your cruelty?’
‘My cruelty!’ He laughed harshly. ‘My God, Jenna, I don’t know how you can say that to me. But let’s get one thing straight here and now. You won’t see Graham Wilde again,’ he told her grimly, ‘and I mean that.’
Jenna couldn’t speak. She was too disbelievingly furious to do so, but one thing was clear to her—James wasn’t going to tell her how to run her life. First thing tomorrow she was going to telephone Graham and accept his invitation for Saturday. And if that invitation extended to sharing a bed with him
as well as a meal? a tiny inner voice demanded relentlessly…Then she would accept, Jenna told herself. James was going to learn that she wasn’t going to allow him to dictate to her, to humiliate her, to subjugate her with his sexuality. She shuddered delicately and looked resolutely out of the window. Dear God, how she hated him! Hated him and hated herself for what he was turning her into.
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
JENNA rang Graham the following morning to accept his invitation for dinner on Saturday night. James was in the Georgian wing talking to the men working there, so Jenna knew that there was no chance of his interrupting her.
It was wrong that she should be made to feel guilty about telephoning Graham. She was completely free to make her own friends and spend her time with them if she wished. Even so, after she had replaced the receiver she was nagged by a feeling of having fallen below her own standards somehow and it enraged her that James should have forced her to behave in a way that made her feel she had been underhand. She was caught in a trap and she was reacting to it as instinctively as any wild animal might, twisting and turning desperately to fight free. But what was the trap? Her marriage or her enslavement to the sexual desire James seemed able to arouse within her at will? Even last night although she had been furious with him…Angrily she refused to allow her thoughts to form. She didn’t want to think about last night or all the other nights when James’s hands against her skin aroused her to such a pitch that nothing was more important than the hectic, remorseless need inside her to make love with him.
Shuddering she went back to her desk and tried to work, but it was useless. Lucy’s arrival gave her a welcome excuse to push the bills to one side and greet her.
‘Tell me all about London,’ she invited. ‘What did you do?’
‘Lots of shopping,’ Lucy laughed. ‘James said he’d never seen so many parcels when he came to pick me up. Definitely not a case of like mother like daughter…’ She made a face. ‘I’ve spent nearly half my allowance already and I haven’t even done any Christmas shopping yet.’
The allowance was James’s idea—it would, he had said, help Lucy to feel more adult and responsible, and Jenna had acceded to it.
‘Well, you know what James said,’ she warned Lucy. ‘No more until the New Year once this quarter’s been spent.’
‘I know. I’ll have to get myself a holiday job, I think…You and I aren’t a bit alike when it comes to clothes and money, are we?’ Lucy mused before Jenna could comment on this new mature attitude. ‘I mean, I’m hopelessly extravagant, and I love clothes and make-up and you…’
A sharp pang of pain ached through her as Jenna looked at the smiling teenager. Lucy was perched on her desk wearing an oversize sweatshirt and jeans, one slim leg balancing her chin while the other swung free.
She was so like Rachel at the same age and, like Lucy, Rachel had loved clothes and make-up. So had she…but once Lucy had been born there had been no time and, most of all, no money for such fripperies, and somehow over the years she had lost that heedless adolescent pleasure in buying herself new things. Now, new clothes were something she bought out of need rather than pleasure. Since she had come back from the Caribbean she had reverted to wearing jeans and cool tops most of the time. The only new clothes she owned were the ones James had bought her and the only time she had worn any of them had been when she had been going out with Graham.
To stem the guilty sensation spreading through her veins, she smiled at Lucy. ‘At your age there was nothing I loved more than a new outfit but somehow over the years…’
‘Tell me about this New Year’s Eve ball we’re having,’ Lucy interrupted eagerly. ‘James was talking about it on the drive home.’
‘Well, the Georgian wing will be finished for Christmas and we’ll move into it then so that work can start on the older part of the house, and James thought it would be a good idea to celebrate the completion of the Georgian wing with a fancy dress ball.
‘We’ve decided to make it a charity affair—I’ve been in touch with the vicar’s wife and she was telling me that they’ve been trying to raise funds to buy some new equipment for the local children’s hospital. From the enquiries I’ve made so far I think it will be a well subscribed event.’
‘Oh…fancy dress!’ Lucy exclaimed. ‘Fantastic! What sort of costume will you have?’ she demanded. ‘It will have to be something special. I know! Something Georgian to fit in with the décor. Where will you get it?’
‘Hold on. I haven’t got anywhere near thinking about what I’m going to wear yet,’ Jenna was laughing in spite of herself. ‘But I suppose you’re right,’ she conceded, ‘it will have to be something Georgian, although I’m not sure what or where it will come from. A hire firm, I suppose.’
‘Oh, no, you want something really special,’ Lucy argued. ‘Something that no one else has ever worn…I know…’ She scrambled down from the desk and ran over to the bookcases, searching along them until she found what she wanted. ‘This has got some drawings in it of fashionable clothes in Georgian times,’ Lucy announced, carrying the book back to the desk. ‘Why don’t you get someone to make you up a copy of one of them?’
On the point of denouncing Lucy’s suggestion as potentially far too expensive, the words died on Jenna’s lips as James walked into the room and asked casually, ‘Make up a copy of what?’
Before Jenna could speak Lucy was enthusiastically pouring out her idea to him.
‘Mmm. I think you’ve got something there, brat,’ he agreed, taking the book off her and flicking thoughtfully through the pages.