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His face was tight with it, those narrowed eyes spitting fire, his hands cruel as he dragged her off her precarious perch on the rickety stool and set her on her feet. And his voice was murderous, low and clipped.
'You little bitch! Just thank your lucky stars I don't hit women.' His hands dropped away abruptly, as if physical contact with her disgusted him. But a stroke of hot colour burned across his high slanting cheekbones as he grated, his voice raw with emotion, 'I didn't touch you because I bloody well couldn't! I was full of guilt. Ridden with it, do you hear me?'
She heard. Oh, she heard. But she didn't understand. She shook her head, stepping back, her face white with misery, and the silence was heavy, thick with things she didn't understand, and she didn't know why he was doing this to them, why he was complicating the dreadful simplicity of his need to be free of one wife to take another.
He said sharply, each word cutting her like a knife, making her change her knowledge of him, of herself and her reactions to him, 'You were expecting our child. You were light with joy, a complete and confident woman.' His mouth twisted in a bitter line. 'And I changed all that. You lost the child and, for all we know, lost the opportunity of conceiving another. And I was behind the wheel.' He swung on his heels, as if unable to look at the beaten creature he believed she had become, and walked to the door.
Beth began to say he mustn't feel guilty, not over that, but the words were stopped in her throat when he whipped round again, facing her, telling her, 'I hired this place for a couple of weeks. I thought we needed and deserved at least that much time to resolve our future.' His voice was toneless now, totally without life, or even, seemingly, interest. 'But now I find I can't wait that long. I can't command the necessary patience and ingenuity to work it through.' He moved out of the door, into a shaft of sudden sunlight, but even that brilliance failed to thaw the ice in his eyes. 'I want you to return to South Park, where, as my wife, you should be. I want no further talk of separations—trial or otherwise—and certainly not of divorce.'
'But what about—?'
'No buts.' He made a slashing gesture with one hand, blocking her tumbling questions about where Zanna and Harry would fit into that particular arrangement. 'It's straightforward enough. Come back to England with me and we'll try to forget the past couple of months ever happened. Or tell me you don't want me at any price. Then we can both wipe the slate clean. I won't beg—I don't even want to. It's entirely your decision, and I want it by tonight.'
He walked away then and Beth stood watching his tall, broad-shouldered figure stride purposefully across the sunlit yard and on to a forest track, the trees swallowing him, taking him away, leaving her feeling more empty and alone than she had ever felt in her life.
Blindly, she walked back into the centre of the small kitchen and began to clear up, hurling her untouched breakfast into the bin, her movements clumsy and uncharacteristically uncoordinated.
No prizes for guessing why Charles had made that ultimatum. Her earlier, and quickly dismissed, idea that Zanna had once again walked out on him had proved to be correct. She could kill the bitch! How dared the hateful creature hurt her darling time and time again?
Then, realising that her feet were planted on the path to hysteria, she took herself in hand and, her soft mouth compressed, gushed a tepid stream from the ineffectual water heater on to the plates in the sink.
Despite everything, she loved Charles. And love could make a fool of the most sensible soul alive. She had been made a fool of once, through loving more deeply than wisely, and it mustn't happen again.
She had to think of herself, acknowledge the impossibility of remaining the wife of a man who was obsessed by another woman. That the other woman was a bitch, incapable of true and abiding love, uncaring of how much torment and pain she inflicted on the father of her child, had nothing to do with the case, she assured herself tightly as she dealt with the breakfast dishes.
Her failure to win his love in the past had taught her a lesson she would be a fool to forget. That their relationship had degenerated abysmally, with little hope of salvation and no hope at all for a return to the civilised and caring thing it had been during the early months of their marriage, had been clearly demonstrated by his ultimatum.
Obviously, with the feckless Zanna out of his reach yet again, he would prefer her to return to South Park and take up her duties as his wife. It would save him from having to face the unsavoury gossip which would undoubtedly follow on a divorce, and, she thought cynically, stowing the last of the cutlery away in a drawer, she had made a career out of being his wife, had been good at the job. Yes, he would prefer her to go back with him but wouldn't much care if she didn't.
Even if she had been tempted to stay married to him, his blunt ultimatum, his careless take-it-or-leave-it attitude, his open admission that he didn't have the patience to try to persuade her—which would entail making love to her at every opportunity until she was utterly seduced into mindless acquiescence—would have put an end to that!
And his insensitive comment about forgetting the past couple of months demonstrated exactly how little he thought of her. How could she ever possibly forget Zanna's return—with their son tucked under her arm—and his obvious desire to get rid of his existing wife in order to marry the woman he couldn't stop loving?
Her chores finished, she wandered outside and sat on a wooden bench near the front door, closing her eyes and allowing the green and golden peace to surround her. She would face her future alone. When Charles came back she would tell him so.
It was all over. Except for one last thing. If they parted tomorrow, or even later tonight, never saw each other again, she had to rid him of those feelings of guilt about the loss of their child.
Slow tears trickled from beneath her closed eyelids, the last she would ever shed for either of them, because if she had known his feelings she wouldn't have felt so worthless and rejected herself, and they could have helped each ot
her through those dreadful days and lonely nights, and the last few months of their ill-fated no-hoper of a marriage would not have spawned the bitter memories they were both going to drag into their separate futures.
CHAPTER EIGHT
Beth was calm, very calm. At least, she thought she was, until Charles walked in on her and every cell in her body went on red alert.
He appeared in the open doorway of the kitchen and he must have walked for miles. His shirt was wet with sweat, sticking to his body, his dark hair damp, unruly, as if he'd pushed his hands through it time and time again. She met the brooding intensity of his eyes and shuddered. He looked exhausted, driven, and her love for him made her tender heart twist in unwilling compassion.
Almost, she was ready to do whatever he asked of her, be whatever he wanted her to be. But only almost. Unconsciously shaking her head, she dismissed the aching temptation. The raw, emotional savagery coming from him had to be down to the pain of having Zanna reject him yet again. It assuredly had nothing to do with whether or not she was willing to forget the divorce she'd told him she wanted.
'We'll eat in half an hour.' The banality of his words was negated utterly by the low harshness of his tone, riven with a pain as dark as it was unknowable, and she nodded mutely, unable to speak, her mouth gone dry, and turned blindly back to the sink where, just before he'd returned, she'd been washing salad.
She heard him move behind her, on his way through to the tiny sitting-room, and felt her whole body tense with her unstoppable, helpless awareness of him. And only when she heard him mount the stairs, heard the sound of his movements in the bathroom overhead, the gush and rattle of the nightmarish plumbing, did she feel herself relax, her body sagging with reaction.
Closing her eyes, she leant against the sink and willed herself to recapture the calm acceptance, the stoicism she had found during the long green and golden day. She wasn't prepared to take second place in his life and she couldn't help him come to terms with what Zanna had done to him. No one could. He would have to call upon his own deep reserves of mental strength to accomplish that. And he, above all men, was strong enough to do it.
Fleetingly, she wondered why the other woman had taken off again. She had seemed determined to replace her as Charles's wife, more than happy with the situation, had agreed that yes, her intention was to legitimise their son, allow him to bear his father's name.
Motherhood had obviously failed to tame the wild and reckless streak that was such a strong part of Zanna Hall's wayward character. She wouldn't be tamed and she wouldn't be caged and she went through life doing exactly as she pleased, utterly regardless of who got hurt in her selfish, flamboyant progress.
