Mistress And Mother

‘The back wheels were bogged down in the mud,’ Sholto supplied. ‘I towed it out.’

‘What with?’

‘I came up here in a four-wheel drive. You didn’t see it because it was in the garage…and your car keys were in your jacket,’ Sholto reminded her.

Molly turned away again. She could not bear to thank him after what he had done to her. Their intimacy had not been accidental, had not been brought about by a sudden attack of lust or sentimentality on his part or even a loss of control. He had chosen his revenge with cruel deliberation. In silence, she ripped open the packet of croissants to put one into the oven to heat. Pride would not allow her to make a fleeing, craven retreat even if her car was conveniently waiting at the door. But no doubt he would be glad to see her go.

Lost in her own disjointed thoughts, she was staring blankly at the tiled wall when Sholto strode past her to take the kettle off the boil. He flipped the slightly singed croissant out of the oven with a deft hand. ‘You’re upset. Sit down. I’ll make the coffee.’

‘I am not upset.’ But she was shivering with cold and she wrapped her arms round herself tightly. In one lithe, disturbing movement, Sholto peeled off his sweater and extended it to her, brilliant dark eyes intent on her drawn profile. Molly surveyed the garment with revulsion and backed away into the sitting room to sink down at the table.

The croissant turned to dust in her mouth and she had to force it down. Her appetite had mysteriously vanished. She found herself stealing furtive, bewildered glances at Sholto. He had brought up her clothes, replaced her torn tights and retrieved her car. But then each and every one of those attentions would also speed her departure and the effortless good manners and the innate sophistication of a male who knew her sex were back in full play again. Last night might never have happened.

Yet last night Sholto had revealed more emotion than she had ever dreamt he might possess on the subject of their marriage. And there was a taut, gritty edge to his spectacular bone structure now, a tightness in the set of his hard mouth that betrayed his continuing tension. The silence smouldered and she was no more at ease with it than he was. Pushing back her plate, she stood up and stretched out her hand towards her jacket.

‘I wasn’t planning to touch you when I got into that bed,’ Sholto drawled softly.

Her hand fell back from her jacket, her face filling with mortified colour. ‘A wicked impulse, was it…a bit of a joke?’ she heard herself bite back with a bitterness that shook her. ‘As much of a sick joke as our marriage?’

Sholto stilled, briefly disconcerted by her sarcasm, and then he strode closer and Molly spread her arms wide in a gesture of angry warning. ‘Don’t you dare come near me!’

‘Hit me if it makes you feel better.’ Tawny eyes watched her with formidably controlled intensity.

Molly didn’t want to do anything that he wanted her to do. She wouldn’t let herself lash out and shatter the last, torturously thin shreds of her control. She drew her arms in again, tight to her sides like a little tin soldier who had broken the line and earned a reproof.

‘When I kissed you, it was a game…I didn’t intend to let it go so far,’ Sholto confessed with a grim edge to his deep, dark drawl, but Molly had already turned her back on him in self-defence.

A game? That precious, wonderful numbness was gone now when she most needed it. Trick or treat, tease and withdraw. Only Sholto had not withdrawn, Sholto had discovered that the response he could gain from his once reluctant bride was more than equal to anything he had been able to extract when she had been in love with him. Had that tantalised him, amused him into continuing his cruel and sadistic game?

‘Dio…’ he gritted, his accent an unbearably sexy purr round the syllables. ‘I really wanted you.’

‘I feel so much better knowing that.’ He had really wanted her. What did that mean and couldn’t he even have had the decency to conceal the vein of surprise that was audible in that admission?

And she wasn’t stupid. Did he have to talk to her as if she were? Sexual desire wasn’t an intellectual thing. Her abandoned response had aroused him and after that it had simply been a question of male lust. She didn’t need that reality spelt out. But Sholto had known exactly what he was doing. He hadn’t stopped because he hadn’t seen why he should. And she would be a very old lady before she forgot his look of savage satisfaction at the instant he had invaded her writhing body with his.

‘And you wanted me,’ Sholto stated with cool and complete conviction.

Molly froze, shock shilling through her.

‘Nor do I recall employing any undue persuasion,’ Sholto drawled in smoothly provocative continuance. ‘In fact if you hadn’t been with me every eager step of the way it would never have happened.’

Molly spun round so fast, she stumbled, but her open palm still cracked across one hard cheekbone with stinging force. Then she staggered back a step, devastated by the violence that had betrayed her and smashed her control.

‘I didn’t want you…and I want nothing more to do with you…ever!’ she stressed, clashing with glittering golden eyes that were as cold as ice. For a split second, she couldn’t break the compelling hold of that scrutiny and that panicked her even more. Then, snatching up her things, she headed for the back door at speed.

She was shaking like a leaf when she got behind the steering wheel but she drove off with exaggerated care, taking the hill which had caused her such grief the night before like a learner driver. Then she noticed the flowers still lying on the passenger seat, the bouquet for Freddy which she had intended to leave at the cemetery. The little church was only a couple of miles further down the road. She performed the task, indifferent to the rain that had come on again.

‘He’s too proud and too angry to chase after you,’ Freddy had written in an urgent letter to her after all that grotesque publicity about the marriage split. ‘If you want Sholto back, the first move will have to be yours…’

And she had responded to him with a whole tissue of face-saving lies. Freddy had deserved better. Weeks and weeks later, she had sat down and written again. It had been a kind of catharsis telling Freddy that love wasn’t always enough and that she could never, ever have lived with being second best.

‘It is a rather elegant shape,’ Donald conceded as he set the graceful, slender-necked vase back on the shelf. ‘But it’s a shame that it’s not that lovely shade of blue which the Chinese were so clever with. Do you think you ought to have it valued?’

‘No…I love it but I shouldn’t think it’s worth much. I admired it the first time I saw it and Freddy complained that his housekeeper wouldn’t let him get rid of it because it was the only ornament in the whole house!’ Molly’s rueful smile of recollection slid away again. It had been over a fortnight since she had come home and that very same day she had returned Donald’s ring. He had accepted her decision without questioning it but she had seen his concern when he’d recognised the desolation she was struggling to hide.

A slightly stout man with greying hair and warm brown eyes, Donald settled himself down on the sofa in her tiny lounge and regarded her consideringly. ‘I really don’t like blundering in where I know I’m not wanted—’

‘Then don’t!’ Molly reddened and pushed an uneasy hand through her hair. ‘I’m sorry, I’m not in the best of moods. My brother and his wife are living a nightmare right now and I feel so helpless!’