‘I didn’t know. I’ve been living and working in New York, don’t forget,’ he told her harshly. ‘What happened, Kate?’ He expelled his breath painfully, his chest expanding and contracting against the pressure of his almost physical anguish. ‘Did your faithlessness eventually kill him?’
It came to her then that far from pitying herself, all her pity ought to be reserved for Dominic. Almost gently she reached up, to smooth the thick damp hair back off his forehead. He was sweating heavily, like someone deep in the grip of a powerful fever, his eyes overbright and his skin hot. Almost as though she herself were somehow removed from their small personal drama, she found herself judicially assessing and weighing his emotions. Was it the torment of desiring her, a woman whom he felt he should despise, that had carved those lines on his face? That he was telling her the truth she did not for one moment doubt, but instead of feeling the sharp pleasure of revenge, all she could feel was a terrible, silencing pity.
Here was a man who through his own blindness had put himself on a rack of torture. A man who had misjudged her so badly that she still hurt from the wounds he had inflicted, and yet who in inflicting them had hurt himself far more.
The thought of telling him the truth never even crossed her mind. The desire for him that had burned through her so hotly only minutes ago had now cooled. He wanted her…but against his will…against everything he believed in, and his wanting for her was a sickness, a flaw in himself as far as he was concerned.
He wasn’t holding her as tightly as he had been and it was easy to wriggle out from beneath him and get off the bed.
‘Kate…’ Dominic reached out for her, but she evaded him, standing looking down into his face and reading the agony there. Part of her wanted to reach out to touch him; to stop his pain, but logic told her that that was impossible. Just as she had had to search inside herself for release from the misery he had caused her, so too must he find his own panacea for his ailment.
‘I think you’d better go, Dominic.’
She said it without emotion,
standing to one side as he rolled off the bed and stood up.
In silence they went downstairs together, stopping only in the hall when Dominic grabbed her arm, swinging her round to face him.
‘You wanted me,’ he told her rawly. ‘I don’t know why you changed your mind, Kate, but you wanted me and I could have made you go on wanting me.’
She didn’t deny it, but said instead with a faintly wintry smile, ‘Think of it as an act of contrition then on my part, Dominic. After all, I’ve just saved you from yourself, haven’t I? Some people enjoy wanting what hurts them most,’ she added softly.
She saw his face drain of colour, but suppressed her sympathy for him. Given what Vera had told her about his childhood wasn’t it possible that in some way he desired her because in his eyes she was the same sort of woman as the mother who had deserted his father, and moreover that he had felt bound to punish himself for that desire? Telling herself that she was venturing into extremely murky and unknown waters, Kate gently pulled her arm free and went to open the front door.
He walked through it without a word.
* * *
A full hour after he had left Kate was still sitting curled up in the chair in the library, gazing pensively into the unlit fire, trying to come to terms with what she had learned.
What Dominic had said to her put a completely different light on what had happened that fateful weekend when she had invited him to make love to her. The harsh rejection she had found so bitterly painful she now saw as a denial directed as much at himself as at her, and no doubt if she had been as experienced as he believed her to be, she would have realised the truth then. But what good would realising it have done?
It would have spared her years of torment, believing herself to be totally undesirable to the male sex. But it wasn’t only Dominic’s rejection of her that had made her so aloof and distant with men, she knew that. And the proof that Dominic had not destroyed her ability to respond sexually given the right incentive, lay in the way she had felt in his arms today. It was useless to hide from herself the fact that she had wanted him; that he aroused within her a deeply passionate response, so intense that it overruled everything else. But it was a desire that was best left unfulfilled, and it came to her as she sat there, that part of the reason she was not going to tell Dominic the truth about herself was because she saw his contempt of her and hatred of himself as a form of protection. She was frightened of how she might feel about him if that barrier was removed. Life with Ricky had destroyed her trust in men, her ability to believe she was worthy of their love, and that had not changed. Dominic might desire, but he did not and could not ever love her, while she… She froze back into the chair as the unpalatable, devastating truth slid into her mind. She was all too capable of loving him. Once acknowledged, such a truth could not be hidden away again. If she was honest she would have to admit that she had fallen in love with him eight years ago…hopelessly and painfully, without even knowing what sort of man he was. And that love would grow, she recognised that now, which was why it was imperative that she kept him at a distance.
Her heartbeat thundered in her own ears as she tried to calculate how long she would be able to keep him at bay. Today she had been able to dismiss him, but how long did she have before that dark, fierce desire she sensed in him overturned the control of his mind and he made good the words he had said to her before he left. It would not be a matter of using force, both of them knew that. All he needed to do was to touch her and her self-control vanished.
Very well then, she told herself resolutely, she would just have to see that he never got the opportunity to touch her. As she made this decision the thought slid into her mind that if Dominic were to believe she had another lover… But that was impossible.
* * *
Work was the only panacea she could find, and she used it ruthlessly to blot out all thoughts of Dominic. She was lucky, she told herself tiredly as she let herself into the house late one afternoon, that the setting up of her new partnership with Harry meant that she was having to make constant trips to her solicitor and the bank.
She had been surprised by how well the bank manager had received her request for a loan. She had explained to him that she was going to sell the house and he had gone through her financial circumatances in thorough detail with her.
Harry too had been able to secure a loan, and their new partnership would be official from the end of the month.
Today she had been to London with Harry to the workshop off the docks to tell the others about their plans which had been greeted with pleasing enthusiasm. If she could just get a commission from Vera now the new venture would be off to a flying start.
It was a nuisance that she was still without a car, but the garage had promised to get hers back to her just as soon as they could, although they had told her that its roadworthy life was now extremely limited.
The phone rang as she walked inside and her stomach jolted treacherously, but it wasn’t Dominic, it was the estate agent, suggesting that he call round in the morning to assess the house.
They had been having a spell of exceptionally good weather, and in the morning, to take advantage of the slight breeze, Kate wedged the front door open so that the air could waft through the house. The estate agent was due at ten, and then she was going over to have lunch with Sue. The summer heat called for cool easy-to-wear clothes and on impulse she had bought herself a new dress when she was in London.
It had been so long since she had last bought herself anything new that she had been faintly shocked by the prices, but a cheque received the previous day for some work she had done had made her feel reckless. It was a pleasant feeling to spend money she had earned herself, and in the end she had surprised herself by buying a totally unsuitable but undeniably lovely concoction which consisted of two tiers of finely pleated cool white cotton chiffon below the waist while above it, the cotton chiffon was supplemented by two panels of delicate blue and green embroidery on a white background which ran from the small round neckline down to the softly bloused waist at both the front and the back. Long full sleeves in the white cotton chiffon fastened at the wrists with another band of embroidery, and while a streak of common sense had told her that the dress was an unnecessary luxury, Kate hadn’t been able to resist it.
Now the fabric felt deliciously cool against her skin, and catching sight of herself in a mirror she paused to study her reflection more thoroughly. Despite its demure high neck and long sleeves the dress had a floaty, almost transparent quality that hinted erotically at the shape of the body it clothed. The delicate tones of the embroidery highlighted her vivid colouring, and her hair, newly washed and totally untameable, had for once been left down.