Angel of Darkness

Stumbling and crying, she had fled upstairs to her bedroom. She had stripped and got into the shower, needing to wash away the taint of the hands that had touched her. There had been bruises on her breasts and a lump the size of a small egg on the side of her head where she had been struck. The attack had terrified her and she had been sitting still shaking on the side of her bed when Angelo knocked and entered.

‘A promiscuous little tramp’, he had called her and, still suffering from the effects of shock, Kelda had looked back at him numbly, unable even to credit that he could think she had been writhing about on the library floor in the dark out of choice.

‘He attacked m-me!’ she had gasped. ‘He was trying to rape me...’

And she still remembered the way Angelo had looked at her. He had been so pale, so rigid with tension. She had recognised the seething anger he was struggling to restrain. It had glittered dangerously in his piercing dark eyes like a violent storm warning. For a foolish moment she had actually thought that he believed her and that he was angry with himself, angry that he had allowed her assailant to get away instead of calling the police to report an assault. But his next words had demolished that hope.

‘You disgust me,’ he had breathed in a savage undertone. ‘I will never forget what I saw tonight.’

He had not even given her a fair hearing, had not hesitated in choosing to believe the very worst of her. His response, following so closely upon the attack she had endured had reduced her to stricken sobs. It had been some time before she pulled herself together again, and then the anger and the fear of what he would tell her mother and Tomaso had assailed her.

She hadn’t thought about what she did next. Had she known what would happen, she would have stayed where she was, safe in her own room...but she had been distressed and frightened and helplessly determined that Angelo should hear her side of the story and believe her. She hadn’t stopped even to put her dressing-gown on.

She had knocked on Angelo’s door. Although she had been able to see faint light beneath the door, there had been no answer. She had crept in. The bedside lamp had cast a soft pool of light over Angelo. He had been asleep and about that point, her memory became confused between what she did recall and what, for a long time afterwards, she had refused to admit even to herself.

A white sheet had been riding dangerously low on one lean golden hip. He had been naked and she had been strangely hesitant about waking him. Indeed now, when she was of an age when she had learnt to be truthful at least with herself, she could admit that she had been mesmerised by his sheer masculine beauty. For the very first time, she had reacted to Angelo’s physical allure. He had not been Tomaso’s son, her hatefully arrogant stepbrother, who just so happened to be very good-looking. No, it had been much more personal, much more intimate than that, and the sensations Angelo had aroused in her had been painfully new to her experience.

He had opened his eyes, pools of passionate gold. He had not appeared to be still half asleep. But perhaps he had been. Something had flamed in that golden gaze that raked over her while she had hovered there in stupid paralysis and he had reached up with two very determined hands and pulled her down on to that bed with him.

‘Carissima...bella mia,’ he had breathed passionately against her lips in welcome, suggesting that he had inexplicably mistaken her for someone else. He could not possibly have been addressing those endearments to Kelda.

‘Angelo!’ she had gasped incredulously before he silenced her with the heat of his mouth.

It had not been to her credit that she had neither screamed nor raised a finger to fight him off. But the terrible truth was that she had had no thought of denying him. In fact she could not recall a single thought of anything passing through her blitzed mind during those fevered few minutes.

The explosion of desire, of need, of want had been instantaneous. The stab of his tongue into the moist interior of her mouth had drowned her in waves of intense physical pleasure. She had been reduced to mindless compliance within seconds. Angelo kissed with electrifying eroticism. She had wrapped her arms round him with shameless abandonment and the spell had only been broken when a thunderous male voice rudely interrupted them.

?

??You set me up!’ Angelo had hissed incomprehensibly, staring down at her with cold, embittered fury.

Even six years after the event, Kelda still got hot and cold reliving that hideous moment when Angelo had released her and she had dazedly focused on Tomaso standing at the foot of the bed. Ignoring her, Tomaso had been ranting at his son in staccato Italian. Normally a mild-mannered man, Angelo’s father had been shocked and completely enraged by the scene he had interrupted.

But then, oddly enough, Tomaso had briefly appeared to calm down. He had even managed a rather grim smile as he said something very clipped. Whatever Angelo had said in response had wiped that smile right back off his face again and two seconds later Tomaso had been ripping off his own jacket, draping it round Kelda’s cowering shoulders and practically trailing her out of the room while throwing words that had sounded positively violent over his shoulder at his son. His precious, much beloved son...

Daisy had come to her bedroom. Kelda had striven to explain the inexplicable but tears had overwhelmed her. ‘Just put it behind you, darling,’ her mother had whispered, in sympathetic tears herself. ‘I know you must feel very foolish but at your age one does do foolish things...that’s a fact of life...and it’s so hard to control your feelings but you’ll get over him...’

Her mother had assumed that she had thrown herself at Angelo’s head because she was infatuated with him, and Kelda had been too deeply ashamed of her behaviour and too desperately confused to protest. She hated Angelo and yet when he had touched her she had gone up in flames. It had not been the sort of self-discovery she could have shared with her mother.

Angelo had read her appearance by the side of his bed as a sexual invitation. Why he should have done so and why he should have acted on such an invitation, she had never understood. Angelo had never given her the remotest hint that he considered her even passably attractive. Could he really have mistaken her for another woman? She found that explanation unlikely. So why had he touched her? To humiliate...to hurt...and when had he planned to stop?

The next morning, Angelo had been gone. He had had an apartment in London. Her stepfather had heavily assured her that he attached absolutely no blame to her. She was innocent of all fault, he had stressed, making her feel guiltier than ever. She had felt so dreadful for causing a rift between father and son. When she had fought her embarrassment enough to mumble, ‘Angelo didn’t mean to—’ Tomaso had grimly silenced her with the reminder that Angelo was eight years older.

Her mother had said later, ‘I can’t reason with Tomaso. He’s very strict about some things and even though I assured him that it was only a few kisses, he won’t listen to me. He said that he can no longer trust Angelo with you and he’s very angry with him. I think he told Angelo to get out and that must have been devastating for both of them. Until now, they were so close...’

Angelo had accused her of setting him up. How, she had no idea, had never wanted to know, because frankly the way things had turned out afterwards she might as well have set him up. His father had told him to leave and she had been relieved of all responsibility for the episode. A couple of days later, she had travelled over to France with a girlfriend and her family for a month’s holiday and while she had been away she had received a letter from her mother, telling her that she was separating from Tomaso.

Had that been her fault? She was much inclined to say no. In the months coming up to that fatal night, she had noticed that Daisy was far from her sunny self. There had been something wrong in that relationship then, some tension that had had nothing to do with what had later happened between Angelo and her.

Dear lord, she suddenly reflected, why had her mother had to get involved with Tomaso Rossetti again? And the second she thought that, she despised herself. How could she be so selfish? Had Tim been right to suggest that her hostility towards the idea of Tomaso and Daisy remarrying related more to her own hatred of Angelo than to any genuine concern for her mother’s future happiness?

Mid-morning the next day, she received a call from Ella Donaldson, who ran the modelling agency she had been with since she was eighteen. ‘I’ve got a last-minute booking for you...if you’re not too proud to take it,’ she announced.

Kelda bit at her lower lip, gathering that the assignment was downmarket and less lucrative than what had once been offered to her.

Ella didn’t wait for her reply. ‘A holiday brochure. A very upmarket company, mind you...St Saviour Villas. Mr St Saviour himself strolled in here not half an hour ago and made a personal request for you, and let me remind you,’ Ella said drily, ‘right now, personal requests for you are like snow in high summer.’

‘I do appreciate that,’ Kelda put in tightly. Her interview with Ella Donaldson a month ago had been very unpleasant. A tough, astute businesswoman, Ella didn’t give two hoots about whether or not Danny Philips had been lying. Her sole angle had been Kelda’s stupidity in leaving herself open to such damaging publicity. The agency had lost a big commission when Kelda was dropped from the Fantasy campaign.