‘I apologise, I obviously haven’t made myself clear,’ he said silkily. ‘I wasn’t inviting you, Amy, I was telling you what I expect you to do.’
‘Now, just you look here—’
He cut off her angry response with just a narrowing of his eyes and a slight lifting of his chin, but suddenly the striking animalistic power of the man was intensely fierce and much to her disgust she felt herself shrink back against her chair as though she were a tiny creature confronted with a violent and predatory hunter. He frightened her! The thought amazed and shocked her more than she would have thought possible. But this wasn’t the Blade she had known through their brief courtship and the first heady days of marriage. This man, with his sensual and compelling authority, was dreadfully remote, the saturnine features cold and analytical and the dark eyes that had always been warm and glowing with love terrifyingly unfathomable in their austere blackness.
‘Do you like it here?’ As the piercing gaze left her white face and travelled slowly round the small cluttered room, she could see both bewilderment and curiosity flare briefly in the hard face.
A mental picture of the fabulous home she had shared with him in London flashed briefly into her mind. Parquet floors covered with precious Chinese silk rugs, exquisite antiques arranged beautifully for both comfort and effect, wonderful oil paintings and Olympic-sized indoor swimming pool and overall the delicate, heady perfume of hot-house flowers that were replaced daily by one of the live-in servants long before the rest of the household was awake. It was the profusion of flowers that had impressed her the most when she had first visited his home, she remembered, and after they had married she had protested at the unnecessary renewing of still perfect blooms. His reply was crystal-clear in her mind and something she had returned to time and time again in the last three months.
‘It pleases me,’ he had said, taking both her hands in his and kissing the tip of her nose lightly. ‘They should go while they are still perfect, before any blemish mars their beauty and they become painful to look at. I don’t like to watch them die or fade, Amy. Decay revolts me.’
At the time she had been struck by the darkness in his face and had passed the moment off quickly, seeking only to comfort and soothe, but then weeks later, when she had seen Sandra, his words had returned with such vividness that she had been physically sick.
‘Yes, I like it,’ she answered quietly. ‘It’s a far cry from your home but it has its own charm and—’
‘I didn’t mean it like that,’ he answered sharply. ‘I wasn’t comparing in any way, putting the place down. It’s just that you seemed to love London so much, the bright lights, the fast pace—’
‘Maybe I’ve grown up,’ she said simply, veiling her eyes as the glittering gaze moved discerningly over her face.
‘It was your home too, you know.’ His voice was soft now, and very deep. ‘Just as much as mine.’
‘No, it never was.’ She didn’t want to hurt or antagonise, but the palatial house in a quiet, discreet London suburb had never felt like home. ‘It was beautiful and I felt privileged to live there, but there was none of me in it. Everything had been organised, arranged, for years before I came into your life and still continued to be when I joined you, even down to the last bowl of flowers.’
‘If you felt like that, why didn’t you say?’ There was a stricken look in his eyes that suddenly made her feel horribly guilty.
‘Because it wasn’t important at the time,’ she said quickly, ‘and still isn’t really. I shouldn’t have said anything, I’m sorry.’ She shook her head distractedly, her soft blonde hair that she had left loose on her shoulders glowing like molten gold. ‘It was a wonderful home, I was very lucky—’
‘To hell with your luck!’ There was a ragged note to his voice that brought her head snapping up but his face was unreadable, cold and remote. ‘I didn’t want you to consider yourself lucky, for crying out loud. I thought we loved each other, that we had a marriage—’ He stopped abruptly, turning from her in one violent movement to stride the two paces to the window where he stood with his back to her gazing out into the wilderness of a garden.
‘I know what you’re thinking, lad—’ Amy had quite forgotten about Mrs Cox, but now as the little woman joined them with the requisite cup and saucer she was immensely glad of the diversion. ‘Jungle, isn’t it?’
Blade turned quickly, the mask he was so adept at putting in place fixed and smiling. ‘A little overgrown, shall we say?’ he suggested with a quirk of one dark eyebrow.