Angel of Darkness

The doctor’s hand restrained her. ‘Stay where you are. I want to see you in my ante-natal clinic Thursday afternoon at two and don’t bother bringing your husband. We’ll do very well without him.’ With that blistering assurance, he took his leave. ‘Don’t trouble yourself, Mr Rossetti. I can see myself out.’

Long after the cottage door had slammed, the silence stretched. Angelo was poised rigid-backed by the window. He was staring out into the darkness beyond the glass. ‘I don’t know what I’m doing here,’ he admitted with gritted abruptness.

Kelda glanced down at herself and discovered she was attired in one of her mother’s frilly cotton nightdresses. Her cheeks flushed. She hadn’t been wearing anything under the robe. ‘You put this on me—’

‘The least of my sins,’ Angelo said half under his breath.

‘I didn’t need a doctor—’

‘What was I supposed to do when you collapsed? Step over you and drive off?’

‘Yes,’ she said sickly, recalling all that had passed before. ‘It would have been more in keeping.’

‘I was very shocked and confused when I came here tonight. I did not fully consider what I was doing,’ Angelo proffered in a murderously controlled tone. ‘I should have waited until I had cooled down. Naturally you are pregnant. Why should you lie about such a thing?’

‘It doesn’t matter.’ Kelda was drained, depressed, empty of all reaction.

‘What was between us is finished—’

She closed her eyes in sudden pain, registered that she was not after all as empty of emotion as she had imagined. She could not cope with Angelo and she could not cope without him. She didn’t know which was worst.

‘It has to be,’ Angelo stressed. ‘I could never forget that you went to bed with Seadon after you were with me in Italy—’

Dumbly she shook her head on the pillow.

‘I could never accept another man’s child in these circumstances. How could you let him touch you after me?’ he bit out in sudden slashing challenge.

‘I don’t want to talk about it.’ She turned her head away.

‘Are you finally ashamed of yourself when it is too late to make any difference?’ he derided half under his breath.

‘You could never trust me...all these years, never once have you trusted me or given me the benefit of the doubt,’ she condemned helplessly, talking to herself, no longer listening to him. ‘I can’t handle that, I never could.’

‘You won’t be expected to handle it from now on.’

‘And now for the good news,’ she whispered unsteadily.

Dark, dark eyes without a shade of gold rested on her. ‘I wanted you so badly, for so long that it was like a sickness in my blood. I was determined to have you at any cost. I thought I could exorcise you with sex but all that achieved was an even greater obsession. I don’t like what you do to me,’ Angelo confessed, his beautiful mouth thinning into a forbidding line. ‘I don’t like the way I behave with you. I like to be in control...a hangover from my childhood...I am not in control with you.’

Neither was she, and sometimes, like now, when he was tearing her in two, it was terrifying. She hated him for hurting her, for not loving her, for insulting her, but when it came to the image of him walking out of the door she wanted to trail him back to hurt and insult all over again. The destruction was more bearable than the emptiness.

‘Go away!’ she suddenly demanded.

Angelo expelled his breath in an audible hiss of rampant frustration. ‘You look so fragile and yet you’re strong enough to defy me. Even as a child you defied me!’

She had thrust her face into the pillow. ‘I needed someone to put their arms round me and make me feel I belonged!’

‘I couldn’t trust myself that close,’ Angelo muttered in a stifled tone of self-disgust.

‘I wish you’d go.’

‘No, you don’t...so

metimes I know what you feel before you even think it. Who is the father?’ he asked again without warning, but this time his wine-dark voice was icily controlled. ‘Is it Seadon?’

‘Does it matter?’

‘I would really prefer not to know for sure,’ he admitted harshly.