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Moments passed, her eyes lifted to look at themselves in the mirror. Downing. He had been on a night binge. So obvious! No sign of him the previous evening; fallen on bed all dressed, possibly drunk. He had been putting an act with his water and tea and the first nights at home. God, how stupid of her! She breathed a cynic ugly smirk to the mirror. The odious rat! She nearly gave in to an incongruous need to throw something, break something. Kill someone! Frustration. Sexual frustration mingling with old stale feelings. She stared at her whitish-fisted hands, the rage so red-hot she feared she would lose control. Her darkened rosewood globes stared back to the mirror. Hard, furious. A leopard would never drop its spots; did she not know it? To realise she would have given herself to him last night. Willingly, lascivious. Stupid woman! Would she never learn?
Her chin lifted on the mirror. No! She would not walk down that path again. The path of bitterness, rancour. Like so many times. She did learn hard lessons. She would use them now. Focus on her welfare, on the estate business, on its people, as she had been doing lately. Which made her happy, if not loved. Well-esteemed by her people, sure. That must suffice. Decisively, she stood up to change and start her day.
She was avoiding him. Conrad concluded three days later, not having seen sign of her. She managed to slip his search with cunning precision. Mrs Hutton came back to school and he found himself released from his position as substitute teacher, with time to try to find her.
She did not have dinner with him, immersed at work before he raised. The servants would never inform him of her whereabouts, surely directed by her. This was too strange, indeed. She had been withdrawn and reluctant to stay in his company, but she had not been avoiding him with such single-mindedness. The worst part was it made him incapable of trying to sort this out in any way, understand what happened. She did not give him the chance. He did not visit her chamber and risk her putting even more distance between them. The time came for him to stop walking on thin ice and set up a number ground rules or this stale mate would never end.
After dinner, she would be at her secretary working. For a variation. He strode into his room and headed to the connecting door, satisfied he had the lock removed. He opened it in a square movement and entered her room. The perfume of verbena greeted him with memories of that fatidic night.
She sat at her secretary, head bent on ledgers. Prudish nightgown and robe. As soon as she perceived him in the room, she stood abruptly, her face assuming a stony expression.
“Get out!”
This was definitely not amicable.
“Why would I do that?” His feet apart, his fists on his hips, he took her animosity head on here.
“Because I say so!” She crossed her arms over her alluring breasts.
“Only when you tell me the reason you are avoiding me so patently.”
They stood their ground, ogling each other in the eyes, in a battle of wills, where both displayed sharp weapons.
She squinted her eyes, certainly vexed by his invasion. He did not care, and would have an explanation. He had been home for less than a month and gave her no reason to act like this.
Her hands clasped her waist and she tramped towards him, a bitterly sarcastic glint in her darkened rosewood eyes.
“A leopard never drops its spot, does it?” She approached him and he discerned a well of contempt in her.
“Would you care to explain?” He held his ground, becoming utterly angry at what he saw as her unfair behaviour.
“Three evenings ago, for example.” She lifted her chin defiantly and stopped two feet away. “Absent, out carousing, no shadow of doubt.”
He contemplated her perplexed. Funny how she believed the worst of him without any proof. She had certainly not heard of Bess’ search. Coleman had not been with them, which meant he would not have told her.
“So you judged and condemned without giving me the chance to defend myself.” The evenness of his voice only superficial.
“I don’t need to clearly. I saw more than enough for three years.” Her expression held a mixture of repulse and chagrin.
“My past condemns me, you say.”
“Exactly!” Her hands fell to her sides and fisted. “When I remember your scoundrel hands touching me, I feel disgusted!”
That came as a spear through his heart. A sliver of bitterness crossed his chest. Her anger seemed irreversible, there for life.
“You are breaching the contract, I understand.”
That had to be the lowest blow he had given someone in his entire life. An undisguised rage adorned her beautiful eyes, her jaw set. He understood how important this was to her.
Aurelia sensed as if a leopard’s paw nails dilacerated her insides, her stomach burned with rage, disgust and contempt. He tried to make her choose between degrading herself by sleeping with him and risking her self-sufficient lifestyle. She did not find her voice to answer to this. It got arrested in her tangled feelings. She just stared him in the eye, daring him to annul the blasted contract.
They stood in the middle of the carpet in a battlefield, hot and cold chills cutting through her. The tension wired her body to a point she could not move a single muscle.
“I did not go partying or anything.” He said, voice low, grave, he looked her directly in the eye. “I haven’t drunk, gambled or whored since I left for India.” He defended himself even unrequested.
With that, he gyrated and passed through the connecting door, shutting it silently behind him.
Aurelia stared at that damned door for long minutes after he left. Contradictions and incongruences criss-crossed her mind, jumbled and undefined. Like a melting pot with the most unusual ingredients, it boiled and boiled, never to get to a defined point.
