He started the engine as he spoke and the big car growled immediately into life, the bonnet nosing into the road as the powerful headlights lit up the darkness.
‘Are you trying to make me hate you?’ Her voice was a whisper in the shadowed confines of the car. ‘Is that the plan?’
‘Hell no,’ he drawled mockingly. ‘It’d perhaps be fun but—no. I’ve just decided to take a short vacation, sweetheart, soak up a little history, and a spot of hill walking while I’m here, and where better to relax than this place that you seem to love so much? Tell me, Amy.’ His voice had altered now, its coolness wry and hard. ‘Do you ever lie awake at night thinking of me with an ache in your body that won’t go away? Thinking of the things we used to do? How you used to groan my name over and over again—’
‘Stop it,’ she said tensely. ‘I won’t listen to this.’
‘Won’t?’ he challenged laconically. ‘A little strong, surely, when you are in my car being driven at fifty miles an hour with the door locked? I wouldn’t have thought “won’t” came into it.’
For a moment Amy felt pure rage drive every other emotion from her body. He was being cruel, hateful, and she didn’t know how to stop it. It was as though he had given himself over to some hard force that had sucked all his finer feelings into an empty void so that all that remained was his darker side.
‘Well?’ He raised black eyebrows in mocking invitation. ‘Not lost for words, surely? Tell me again that I mean nothing to you, that it was all a mistake, that your body isn’t crying out for mine this very moment. Tell me, Amy. I missed out on fairy-tales when I was younger; I’m about due for some now.’
‘I hate you.’ It was true, she did. Didn’t he know this was all for him, that she was suffering tenfold anything he was enduring? He could never have loved her, really loved her, to treat her like this now.
‘I’ll buy that,’ he said grimly. ‘I’d have preferred something a little less caustic but at least hate is real, more real than this rubbish you’ve been handing out to me for days. You can’t ignore hate, Amy, it won’t let you.’
‘I haven’t ignored you.’ She stared at him in amazement. ‘I’ve never ignored you.’
‘Then you’re one hell of an actress, sweetheart,’ he said harshly. ‘Once or twice back there I began to think I was the invisible man; out of sight, out of mind. But I won’t stay out of sight, will I? That’s what really rankles, isn’t it? Did you really think I wouldn’t want more than a few words scribbled on a piece of paper? That you could just glide out of my life like one of your English milkmen delivering a daily pinta? “Sorry, the cream’s off from now on, skimmed will have to do?” Well, I want the cream, Amy, and I’ll have it one way or the other.’
‘You’re talking about sex,’ she said flatly.
‘Am I?’ He was driving far too fast for the narrow winding road, but she didn’t care. Right at this moment in time she didn’t care about anything. ‘Well, if you say so it must be true. You’ve got everything sewn up, after all; who am I to argue? But I tell you one thing, if I see that slime-ball touch you again there’ll be murder done, crutches or no crutches.’
She thought it prudent to ignore the insult to John for the moment as she glanced at his stony profile, black with rage, and concentrated on the first part of his statement. ‘You are talking about sex,’ she said quietly. ‘Animal lust! And where are we going, anyway? This isn’t the way home.’
‘To take your first point, if you remember I did give you the option and you chose not to compromise. Lovers not friends, remember? As to the second, you are quite right, this is not the route to Mrs Cox’s safe little house.’ His voice was sardonic and cold. ‘This leads somewhere quite different.’
‘Where?’
He didn’t miss the note of alarm in her voice and smiled in mocking satisfaction. ‘Have patience, sweetheart, all will be revealed,’ he said smoothly, all emotion carefully banked now. ‘You can’t come to any harm, after all; we are married, remember—it’s quite legal.’
‘If you are planning rape, that isn’t legal in any situation, married or not,’ she said tightly as she forced back the tell-tale tremble of fear from her voice. ‘I’d never forgive you—’
‘Rape?’ He actually had the effrontery to smile, and but for the fact that, as he had pointed out before, they were travelling at breakneck speed on the curving country road she would have hit him hard. ‘Within a few seconds of my touching you it won’t be rape, Amy, and we both know that. But you are assuming rather a lot, aren’t you? As far as I’m aware, you haven’t even been asked.’