AllFreeNovel
Share Us
She was, Beth discovered, finding it very difficult to concentrate on what she was trying to say. Alex’s proximity was distracting and dizzying her. It would be so easy just to reach out and touch him. All she had to do was to lean forward a little and raise her hand and then she would...she could... Despairingly she moistened her dry lips with the tip of her tongue.
Hurriedly Alex looked away from her. If she kept on touching her mouth like that there was no way he was going to be able to stop himself from taking hold of her.
He tried to concentrate on what she was asking him.
‘I...er...my mot
her told me. The glass you were originally shown was stolen from my cousins. The thieves were using it to lure unsuspecting buyers into placing orders for what they believed would be good-quality reproduction glassware like the items they had been shown—items which were, in fact, genuine antiques—and I—’
‘So it wasn’t just me...I wasn’t the only...?’
‘The only one? No, not by a long chalk,’ Alex reassured her.
‘The only fool,’ Beth had been about to say, and she was sure that was what Alex must privately consider her to be. Now that he had told her she couldn’t understand how she had ever believed the glassware she had been shown was modern. Perhaps she had believed it because she had wanted to believe it.
‘Your cousins must be pleased to have recovered their antiques,’ Beth told Alex tonelessly.
‘Yes, especially my aunt. She felt the most responsible because she was the one who had resisted installing a new alarm system.’
‘Did the night-watchman recover from his injuries?’ Beth asked Alex suddenly, remembering how he had told her about the burglary the day he had taken her to see the castle.
‘Yes. Yes, he did,’ Alex confirmed, looking surprised that she had remembered such a small detail of their conversation. Beth looked away from him. She could recall virtually everything he had ever said to her, and everything he had ever done.
‘Are you...are you back in England permanently now?’
‘Yes...yes, I had my year out and now I’ve accepted a Chair at Lexminster, lecturing in Modern History.’
Beth stared at him white-faced. There was no mistaking the reality of what he was telling her, nor its truth. She might have doubted him originally when he had told her he was a university lecturer, but now, listening to the calm way he was discussing his career, she knew he had spoken the truth. She was the one who had been guilty of deceit, not him—she had wilfully deceived herself about her real feelings for him, her real reason for feeling those feelings. A sharp pain twisted through her heart. She could just imagine how attractive his female students would find him, how easily they would probably fall in love with him...as easily as she herself had done.
‘Beth, about this glass. Let me speak to my family,’ he began, but Beth shook her head quickly.
‘I know what you’re trying to do but it’s no good,’ she informed him tersely. ‘I just don’t have the money to place another order, Alex—not with your cousins, not with anyone. In fact—’ she lifted her head and looked proudly at him ‘—when you arrived I was just about to get in touch with my partner to tell her that we’re going to have to close the business down. I owe the bank too much to continue.
‘Why aren’t you telling me that it serves me right, that I should have listened to you in the first place?’ Beth asked him painfully in the silence that followed her disclosure.
‘Oh, Beth...’
Tenderly Alex closed the distance between them, reaching past the chair to take her in his arms and cradle her against his body, whispering soft words of endearment in her ear, kissing the top of her head and then her closed eyelids, her cheekbones, the tip of her nose...her lips...
‘Alex... No...no...’
Frantically Beth tore herself out of his arms.
‘I want you to go. I want you to go now,’ she told him shakily.
‘Beth,’ Alex protested, but Beth didn’t dare allow herself to listen to him.
‘Very well. If you won’t leave then I shall have to,’ she told him, starting to hurry towards the door.
‘Beth, Beth, it’s all right. I’ll go. I’m going,’ Alex told her soothingly.
Beth didn’t look at him as she heard him walking past her towards the door. It hurt so much more to know he was leaving her life this time. Before, in Prague, she had been so angry that that had protected her to some extent from the reality of her pain. The knowledge of how she really felt about him had only come later, after the heat of her anger had died. But now she had no anger to protect her. Now there was no barrier between her and the pain.
Impulsively she hurried to her sitting-room window. Alex was just getting into his car, and Beth’s eyes widened as she realised how expensive and up-market it was. Oddly, despite his casual clothes, the car seemed to suit him. In fact, Beth recognised, on a fresh stab of pain, Alex was carrying about him a very distinctive air of authority. Even in Prague she had been aware that he was quite a bit older and more mature than the majority of the young students taking their gap year out between finishing university and finding a job, but now, seeing him on her own home ground, she was struck by how easily he would fit into the same mould as Kelly’s Brough and Anna’s even more formidably successful husband Ward.
Alex was starting his car. Beth leaned closer to the window, yearning for one last glimpse of him. As though he sensed that she was watching him he looked back towards the window where she was standing. Immediately Beth drew away from it, pain drowning out all the voices of rationality that tried to tell her that she had done the right thing, that all he had really come for had been to taunt her and gloat over her, that he had lied to her when he had claimed to be concerned.
Half an hour later Beth was just on her way back down to the shop when she caught sight of the wedding invitation she had placed on the sitting-room mantelpiece. Dee’s cousin Harry was marrying Brough’s sister Eve the week before Christmas, and Beth had been invited to the ceremony.
