Crescendo

He moved closer to her and she suddenly heard the unsteady beating of his heart just behind her back.

'When I was back in London I told myself I'd been a fool, but I couldn't forget you. You kept com­ing into my head.'

She was listening now, intently, her face pale. Gideon sighed and put his cheek on her shoulder.

'But then I met you again in London and I knew I had to see you. I wanted to find out more about you, discover if you really were as gentle and inno­cent as you seemed. But I never laid a hand on you —you can't say I did, Marina. I was very careful with you. I never saw you alone, never took you to my flat, never said a word to you that couldn't have been heard by anyone else.'

She had to believe that, remembering how they had always met in public places where they were under observation all the time. Gideon had taken her to restaurants, theatres, parks, but he had never taken her to his flat and he had never made any at­tempt to touch her. It had not occurred to her that he had been deliberately staying out of temptation.

'I was afraid of being alone with you,' he mut­tered harshly. 'I knew that if I had the chance I'd give in to temptation. The more I got to know you the more it mattered to me that you should stay as sweet and untouched as you were. The life I'd led had made me the wrong man for you. Do you think I didn't know that?'

'Then why did you go on seeing me?' she asked, angry because he did not seem to realise that he had been wounding her during those months, the months when he had come and gone like the swal­low and she had never known if he cared twopence for her.

'I couldn't stop,' he admitted on a mutter of pain.

'While I was going round the world I found myself thinking about you all the time. You were in my head and then in my blood, and then I realised you were necessary to me. I'd sworn that I'd never again let another woman take over my life, but without even knowing what you were doing, you'd absorbed every part of me. When I was away from you, I ached for a sight of you. I couldn't wait to get back to London to see you, hear your voice.'

She listened intently. So much had been hidden from her, she realised now. Gideon had been keep­ing all this from her. She had wondered why he kept on seeing her when he did not seem to care anything for her. All this had been going on under his cool, deceptive surface, and he had kept it from her.

'I was going crazy keeping my hands off you,' he said thickly. 'I wanted you so much.'

She turned her head to eye him with dislike and cold anger. 'You've got a one-track mind.'

'It wasn't like that,' he protested.

'No?' She lifted her brows, smiling icily.

He looked at. her as if she were a stranger; winc­ing. 'I was torn between wanting to touch you, hold you, and wanting to keep you just as you were.' His eyes softened to a deep tenderness, and she thought of him lying on the grass up on the hill from which the grave circle stared down over the green valleys. She had looked at his sleeping face and seen strength and tenderness in it. She had been blind to the self- willed arrogance which formed that strength.

'Then you suddenly stopped seeing me,' Gideon said through taut white lips. His face had changed; all angles, the bones jutting out from beneath the skin and making him look as though he were suffer­ing acute pain. He stared at her, his dark eyes tense. 'At first I didn't believe it and then when I realised you just didn't want to see me, I went out of my mind. Why did you? Why did you shut me out?'

Marina couldn't answer. Her voice just would not come. She was staring at him and seeing again the dark frustration he had shown her on the night of that concert when he had looked at her across the hall with leaping eyes and the passionate, hungry concentration of a man at the end of his tether. The mask had come off that night. Gideon had shown her naked pain as he looked at her and she was seeing it now, the black eyes tortured with it.

'That boy,' he demanded, his taut lips scarcely moving, the words coming out dry and husky. 'What was ,there between you and that boy? I took Diana to the theatre one night and I saw you with him.'

'I saw you,' she said bitterly. She had seen him with Diana and she had been so jealous she had wanted to die, but Gideon wasn't thinking of that. He was staring at her, but his eyes were blind as if he were seeing it all again.

'I'd begun to think of you as mine, as belonging to me, without ever realising it. The very fact that I'd never touched you made you so special, put you in a category of your own. Then I saw him put his arm round you and I was almost sick on the spot.'

He broke off, his voice harsh. 'I couldn't bear to imagine what must be

going on between the two of you. If he touched you in public I thought he had to be doing more than that in private. I thought of him kissing you, holding you, and. I went so pale

Diana noticed and asked me if I felt ill. I told her I did.'

'You were still sleeping with her,' Marina accused fiercely, looking at him with contempt.

She saw from the compression of his mouth, the hardness of his eyes, that he would have lied to her if he dared, but she held his stare and in the end he said grimly: 'Yes, until that night.'

He saw her face close up and her eyes fill with anger and broke out hoarsely, 'I'd never let myself think of you that way! Don't you understand? After the day I came down here and you played to me, I wouldn't allow myself to put a finger on you. I still slept with Diana because it had never meant a damned thing and it didn't seem to me then to have any connection with how I felt about you.'

'That's very comforting,' she said icily.

'Don't, darling,' Gideon muttered.

'Don't call me darling!' She turned to walk away, her body shaking with anger and pain, and he caught her back and held her, putting his cheek down on her hair, the warmth of his breath drifting across her forehead.

'It never happened again after that night, Marina.'