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'We have two rooms. This and the bedroom above. The kitchen and bathroom are tacked on. Primitive, but adequate. I imagine it was once a woodsman's hut; it's not large enough to have been a hunting lodge.'
'I can't imagine why you bothered.' A nice touch of derision there. She bent to remove her muddy shoes, careful to keep her grasp on the enveloping rug firm, still keeping her eyes averted from him, then padded past him, making a show of opening the door which led into the built-on kitchen.
Basic, as he had said, but, as they wouldn't be here for more than a few hours tomorrow, adequate enough. And then, because she could sense his eyes on her, watching her every movement, she told him coldly, 'If, for some unknown reason, you wanted to discuss the details of the divorce personally, instead of through solicitors, you could have done it by phone. Don't you think dragging me out here was a touch melodramatic?' Oh, nicely said, she congratulated herself hollowly. She was at last getting the hang of presenting a cool, almost disinterested facade around him.
But the small success didn't make her feel any better; worse, if anything. She heard the deep pull of his indrawn breath and she did look at him then, hoping there was no trace of her inner anguish in her eyes. And what she saw made her heart turn over because he looked like a man who had recently travelled to hell.
His skin was taut across his facial bones, the character lines more deeply drawn, and there was a brooding savagery in his eyes that she had only seen once before. And that had been when Zanna had left him that first time.
First time? She shook her head unconsciously, pushing that unbelievable thought aside. She dared not allow herself to believe that the woman he loved, always would love, had once again walked out on him. But why else should he look as though the light had gone out of his life?
And then the moment was gone, pushed away by his tempered steel voice. 'And left you happily where you were—enjoying Templeton's love-making, drawing up cosy little plans for when you could be married? Sorry, my dear,' his voice became a menacing drawl, 'but I don't operate that way. And neither, as my wife, do you.'
Pointless to remind him that she wouldn't be his wife for much longer, or to tell him that William had never made love to her, that she would have run a mile if he'd tried it. That he might have proposed but that she would never have accepted in a million years. Pointless.
> Suddenly Beth felt tears sting at the back of her eyes, making her throat burn. And she felt incredibly weary of the whole sorry mess, incredibly tired. She said numbly, 'If it's all the same to you, I'd like to get out of this rug,' then wished she'd kept her mouth firmly closed, a slow burn of colour covering her face as she remembered the way he'd looked at her naked body when, at his insistence, she'd removed her sodden clothing. Recalled how he'd asked if she turned on as easily for William. He must think she was a sex-starved tramp.
Besides, he had to remember her passionate, uninhibited response to his lovemaking before the loss of their child. The way he had refused to come near her, touch her, in the empty months that had followed. He would be putting two and two together and drawing the conclusion that sexual frustration had led her to jump into bed with William Templeton, not to mention wholeheartedly enjoying a sexual romp on the floor of the forest with the husband she had professed not to want, had walked out on!
His face was white, his mouth clamped in tight disgust, a muscle working sporadically along his hard jawline and, to dispel what he was obviously thinking, she said sharply, 'Don't worry, I'm not offering anything. I'd simply like to have a hot bath, if there is such a thing, and turn in. Whatever you have to say to me can wait until tomorrow.'
He didn't say a word. He gave her a long, complicated look then picked up her suitcase and walked up the narrow stairs. Beth followed, reluctantly and only because she had to, had no other option, clutching at the rug, hoisting it above her knees, afraid she might trip.
The stairs gave directly into a bedroom with a sloping ceiling. It was basically and simply furnished with a double bed she thought she might need a step-ladder to climb on to, a pine chest of drawers and a chair, and no door except one in narrow, white-painted pine boards, set into the opposite wall.
'The bathroom, such as it is, is through there.' Charles put the case down and gestured towards the white-painted door. 'No bath, but there is a shower and if the power's gone out recently there should still be some hot water.' He turned and took a dark navy sweater from one of the drawers, pulling it over his head.
She snapped out, all too revealing, 'About time, too!' Half naked, he presented a problem, especially so in the confines of the small room. She only had to look at his bronzed, hair-roughened skin to ache to touch it, to feel the vital warmth of flesh and blood, the hardness of bone and sinew, to feel his body respond to her as once it had done.
And one brow arched darkly, as if he knew what lay behind her snapped retort, but his mouth was unsmiling, the look he gave her long and hard before wide shoulders rose in a slight, dismissive shrug beneath the clinging, expensive wool. 'It's gone colder. I'll put a match to the fire before I make supper. Soup and rolls be enough?'
It had gone colder. The storm had cleared the air and the interior of the cottage felt chilly. Still Beth's slight body was burning, every cell, every nerve-end ignited by the mere fact of his presence, but she wasn't going to admit to that. And she wasn't going to prolong the torment of this crazy evening.
Tomorrow morning, after a night's sleep, would be soon enough to get to grips with his reasons for bringing her here, listen to whatever it was he had to say that couldn't have been discussed by letter or over the phone.
'I don't want anything.' She turned her back, opening her suitcase and rummaging around for the old, worn T-shirt she had taken to wearing to bed since leaving him.
Before then, before that fateful day when Zanna had reappeared, she had always worn the finest satins and silks at night, the most seductive night-wear money could buy, because she had never given up hoping that he would change his mind and come to her…
'Just one thing…' The harshness of his tone made her spine go stiff, her fingers rigid among the muddle of her hurried packing. 'Did you meet up with Templeton before, arrange to leave me and go to him? Or was it sheer coincidence that you went to work for him and made him fall in love with you?'
She did move then. Moved in one swift, fluid movement, totally oblivious of the way the rug pooled at her feet. And her head came up, her eyes sparking emerald defiance, clashing with his icily narrowed, probing gaze.
'Don't tar me with the same brush that blackened you!' Throughout their married life he had secretly yearned for the woman he really loved, had at some stage met up with her, arranged for her, Beth, to be tossed aside like an old rag. Must have done. Zanna had already known that his marriage was over. He had to have told her. Had he pleaded with Zanna to return to him, promised to get rid of his unwanted wife?
'Talk about double standards!' she spluttered on, furious now, forgetting her vow to remain calm, in control, act as if she no longer cared, had stopped caring a long time ago. 'But no, I had never met William before I went to work for him. And no again, I didn't "make" him fall in love with me.'
She was in a prime position to know how cold-bloodedly he'd married her, making no secret about his desire for a family, young children to fill the empty rooms at South Park, to inherit his considerable wealth. He had never even pretended to love her. Simply decided, after that six months' probationary period, that she would make an acceptable mother of his children, a good hostess, a biddable wife. So, knowing all that, she couldn't help tacking on, her short upper lip curling scornfully, 'Do you really see me as the sort of woman who could go around seducing every man she meets into falling in love?'
The very idea was risible, insane, and Charles was at last showing himself in his true colours, revealing the tortuous reasoning behind his strange behaviour.
He hadn't followed her to France to discuss their divorce, dragged her here because he had some complicated settlement to talk out. The cunning devil was trying to turn the tables, to make her seem the guilty party. How he must have rubbed his hands when he'd walked in and witnessed William's proposal of marriage!
He was sneaky and devious and—
And he was looking at her, a small smile tugging at the corners of his mouth, his eyes caressing her heaving breasts, sliding over her narrow waist, the gentle curve of her belly, down her long, slender legs, then slowly up again. And the smile became very slightly cruel as he told her, 'Very capable indeed. Capable of seducing any man who's once looked on that delectable body and is fool enough to think he can hold on to you.'
And only then, at last penetrating her fury, came the knowledge that she was stark naked!
