Stronger than Yearning

She heard him laugh harshly as he moved away from her. ‘If you’re not woman enough to know, there isn’t much point in my telling you.’

He meant that he was motivated simply by physical desire, she thought dully. And, no doubt, male-like he resented her refusal to admit that his desire kindled her own. Now at last she knew why she had always been on edge with him, so determined to hold him at bay…It was because all along she had sensed how attracted she was to him; how dangerously ready to fall in love with him. That antagonism that had prickled within her at their first meeting had held more than a sharp edge of desire, but she had not wanted to admit it. Her dream, if she was honest with herself, had not been about the man in the portrait, but about James. Pure fantasy stuff. Her sleeping mind’s way of trying to show her what she really wanted. She was just on the point of sliding into an exhausted sleep when she felt James move.

No doubt he was going back to his own bed. She closed her eyes determined not to watch him go, and then gasped as she felt him lift her.

Cradled against his chest she glowered furiously at him. ‘Just what do you think you’re doing?’ she demanded.

‘Taking you to where you belong,’ he told her softly. ‘My bed…’

A terrible weakness assailed her. There was nothing she wanted more right now than to go to sleep in James’s arms. More tears stormed the back of her throat but she suppressed them. Why weep for what she could not have? Surely she had learned the futility of that long ago? James would never love her.

The enormity of what she had committed herself to tormented her dreams. She saw the years ahead of her, loveless, empty years when she would have James’s love-making for just as long as it took him to grow bored with her and then what? What would happen when the girls were grown and he had no further use for her? But of course, she was forgetting the main reason he had married her. She was forgetting the old Hall. And then Jenna knew that as much as the house meant to her it was not all-important. She would give it up, and willingly, to escape from the torture of being James’s unwanted wife. In her sleep she turned away from him and curled up into a tight defensive ball, completely unaware of the fact that he was awake and watching her, a brooding bitterness darkening his eyes as his gaze slid over her hunched shoulders.

He reached out and touched her, caressing the exposed curve of her shoulder, his voice wryly bitter as he murmured, ‘So, even in sleep you reject me, Jenna. I wonder what it would take to make you turn gladly into my arms for once.’ His mou

th compressed and he moved away from her, lying on his back with his hands locked behind his head, lost in the pain of his own thoughts.

CHAPTER FOURTEEN

‘JENNA, Lucy tells me that you’ve forbidden her to go to a friend’s party this weekend.’

Jenna looked away from James and into the fire. They had started lighting it in the evenings only a week ago when September drifted out into a cold October. Or did she simply feel so cold because of the empty wasteland that was her life, Jenna wondered soberly.

James seemed to be spending more and more time in London, coming home only at weekends. Sarah and Lucy were both busy with their own lives, Lucy at her new day school, and Sarah with the promise of art school to lure her to spend most of her spare time poring over either her books or at her easel.

‘Jenna?’

The sharp note of disapproval in James’s voice hurt her, but she wasn’t going to let him see it. She had not been quite certain what to do when Lucy came home and told her that she had been invited to a party at a schoolfriend’s home, especially when she had learned that the girl’s parents would be away from home that weekend. The spectre of what had happened to Rachel still haunted her, and while she knew that she could not keep Lucy a girl for ever, she wanted to protect her for as long as she could.

It pained her that Lucy had not accepted her embargo on the party but had gone to James instead. She had been getting on so much better with Lucy recently, and now it seemed she had spoiled it all. An irrational surge of jealousy against James prompted her to say bitterly, ‘Yes, I heard you, James, but you seem to forget that you are not Lucy’s father.’

She got up from the dinner table as she spoke and went over to the fire, bending to put another log on it. It had been raining all day and outside the trees dripped monotonously. It was also windy and cold, the weather echoing her own inner despair. James had only been home a matter of hours, having arrived just in time for dinner. How long would it be before he started making excuses not to come home at all, but stayed in London over the weekend as well? Before they were married he had stated his intention of doing most of his work from the Hall, but now he seemed to have changed his mind. He took so little interest in the house that Jenna sometimes wondered why he had ever wanted it.

But she knew the answer to that of course. Did owning the property that had once belonged to the man who had so wronged his mother ease any of his anguish? It was not a question she could ask him. They were like two strangers forced to live in close proximity to one another, and Jenna did not know how she could bear it for much longer. James no longer even seemed to desire her. The last time he had made love to her had been the night she had been out with Graham.

She hadn’t seen Graham since that night, nor did she want to. She paced restlessly round the room, wishing she could find the courage to tell James that she wanted their marriage to come to an end. She could not endure the slow torment of living with him, of loving him and of knowing that he felt nothing for her in return. It was slowly destroying her. Now that she no longer had her resentment of him to buoy her up she sometimes felt as though her life had totally disintegrated.

She heard his chair scrape back as he stood up, but didn’t bother to turn to look at him, and was therefore startled when he drawled bitingly, ‘No, Jenna, I am not Lucy’s father, but by the same token you are not her mother.’

For one disbelieving moment Jenna thought she must be imagining things. She stared at James, forgetting her resolution not to look at him, her mouth opening slightly. In those early days of their marriage she had tensed herself against a remark of this kind, sure that he must know that he was her first and only lover, and then when no such remark had ever been forthcoming, she had surmised that James must not, after all, have been aware of her virginity and that her belief that he was had sprung only from her own fear of discovery. Therefore, it came as a double shock now to discover that he had known all along, and, moreover, that he had kept that knowledge to himself.

‘I…You…’

He let her struggle for a few seconds and then said sardonically, ‘I shouldn’t bother trying to lie about it if I were you, Jenna. Surely you can’t really believe I don’t know a virgin when I make love to one?’

All the breath seemed to have been squeezed out of her lungs. It was actually physically painful to try to drag air into them. A roaring sense of despair engulfed her, followed by an intense surge of anger. ‘If you knew, then why didn’t you say something before now? Or were you keeping it in reserve, as an alternative means of torture once the novelty of making me submit to your love-making had waned?’ she demanded savagely.

She saw his mouth compress and knew instantly she had pushed him too far.

‘Submit?’ He said the word slowly as though tasting it. ‘What a very odd memory you have, my dear. Or perhaps it’s your understanding of the English language that is at fault?’ His voice was liquid soft with menace and contempt, and Jenna felt herself go hot all over as she remembered her wanton response to him the last time they had made love.

‘Quite so.’ His mouth was twisted and for a second it seemed as though there was something more than mere bitterness in his eyes as they met hers, but before Jenna could define his expression he had looked away and then at last he answered her original question, his voice stripped of all emotion as he said coolly, ‘As to why I said nothing, I could well ask you that same question, couldn’t I?’

When she remained stubbornly silent, he added bitingly, ‘I know exactly whose child Lucy is, Jenna. She’s your sister’s. It was all there in the records, Lucy is registered as your sister’s child, father unknown…’

He turned his back on her, his voice suddenly savage with anger and something else she couldn’t name as he demanded bitingly, ‘Did you really think I would not know she could not possibly be yours?’

‘But you said nothing,’ Jenna said stupidly, hating him suddenly for the torment she had endured in the early days of their marriage, waiting for him to denounce her, and then her feeling of relief when she thought he must not know. How she had deluded herself!