Page 24 of Savage Obsession

'I'm tired.' Her small face was pale with the strain of knowing herself trapped by her own unthinking revelation of her pregnancy, of the sheer effort of determination that had led her to make the stipu­lations that would enable her to keep her self-respect.

She got to her feet, pushing the wings of dark hair away from her forehead, gesturing to the hid­eously unyielding sofa he had to have used last night. 'If you're not up to facing the rigours of that thing again, then I'm willing,' she said, making it clear that her insistence on separate sleeping ar­rangements was already in operation. And he lifted one straight black brow cynically.

'I'm flattered to hear that there's at least one area in our life where you're willing. I shall manage ad­equately; you take the bed.'

And then, before weak tears could betray her, she turned to the stairs, but his voice, cold and hard, stopped her, froze her in the ice of disgust.

'There is one thing, my dear wife—before we embark on the future of your choosing. I would like to be sure that the child you are carrying is mine, not Templeton's.'

CHAPTER NINE

For a moment Beth was too shocked and furious to move. Her heart beating like a drum, she felt a tide of angry colour flush over her face before it receded, leaving her feeling cold with a rage deeper than she had ever known before.

How dared he?

Hauling her shoulders back, scarcely knowing what she was doing, she marched rigidly back across the room, brought her hand up and cracked it across his hard mouth, using every last ounce of strength.

The harsh sound of the contact, emphasised by the silence of the room, gave her a small, mo­mentary stab of satisfaction, but not enough to as­suage the anger boiling inside her, not nearly enough.

Charles didn't even flinch and the brief flare of something that looked, oddly, like triumph died quickly and left his eyes like stone, betraying nothing. She might not have touched him, let alone slapped him with all the energy she possessed, and she raised her hand again, her already stinging palm ready to deliver one more blow, and then another—until she had worked the torment of her anger, her passionate disgust of what he had said, right out of her system.

But, without even seeming to move, he captured her wrist in one of his hands and held it between them, the dark red stain already spreading over his face in stark contrast with the pinched whiteness of the skin around his nostrils.

'A wife is allowed to slap her husband just once in her life. That option is no longer open to you. Try it again and I'll hit you back.' He released her hand then, stepping back as if he couldn't bear to be this close, and the grey of his gunfighter's eyes had turned to black and she knew he meant what he said.

Her own head came up, her green eyes defiant in the small pale oval of her face. And the clamour of her heartbeats pushed the breath from her lungs as she realised how she would almost have wel­comed his physical violence, because it would at least be contact, of a kind, an indication that his emotions were involved, and that—anything—would be better than the cool scorn with which he now regarded her, the light sarcasm he had used to her when discussing the future of their marriage.

And that thought, more than anything else, made her draw back, lose the taste for confrontation. It was sick, and she disgusted herself. Physical vi­olence had always been loathsome to her and, as far as she knew—and she knew him well—to him.

And then, with a cold sarcasm that made her shiver, and go on shivering, he told her, 'I take it that your reaction means you haven't slept with him. You'll have to forgive me for asking, but I did hear him propose marriage. And, being a cynic, I assumed you had given him the necessary encouragement.'

Beth turned away, all her mental and physical reserves brought into play in her effort to cross the room and walk up the stairs without breaking down completely. And, this achieved, by some large miracle, she lay awake for most of the night won­dering how she was going to cope with the rest of her life.

'Oh, it is nice to be home!' Molly Garner heaved a sigh of pure pleasure, took her teacup and saucer from the low table and leaned back in her arm­chair, sipping contentedly. 'I don't care what country you're in, you can't get a decent cup of tea. Not that we didn't have a lovely time, of course, but—'

'It is nice to be home!' Beth supplied with a wide and wicked grin as she gathered her parents' holiday photographs together and stacked them neatly.

The windows were open and the distant sound of a lawnmower was vaguely hypnotic in the som­nolent late-summer afternoon and just outside the windows a bee buzzed drowsily in the voluptuous heart of a blowsy red rose.

For the first time in weeks Beth felt a layer of contentment close around her heart. And she said, meaning it more than her mother would ever know, 'It's nice to have you home. I've missed you both.'

In the few weeks she'd been back at South Park she had felt lonelier and emptier than she had ever done in her life. True, Allie had welcomed her suggestion of renewing their partnership with a whoop of delight and they'd been busy sorting out the legalities, future working procedure, and turning a little-used study which was tucked away behind the impressive library at South Park into an office for her use, complete with a computer link­up, filing cabinets and the like.

But nothing, not even starting back to work again, could ever make up for the cold sham of her marriage, and she shuddered involuntarily and her mother asked quickly, 'Cold, pet? Let me close that window.'

'I'm fine. Just a goose walking over my grave.' She found a smile for her spherical mother who was already struggling out of the depths of her chair, and went on smiling until her face felt stiff with the effort as Molly scoffed,

'It's nice of you to say it, but you wouldn't have had time to miss us, running around like that. France, wasn't it?'

Her parents hadn't been back home for five minutes before the gossips had gone to work. Nothing could be kept a secret in this close-knit community. So Beth had little option but to bend the truth.

'Near Boulogne. Charles was so often away at that time and Allie had a client she couldn't fix. It was only a short-term temporary thing, so I stepped into the breach. Charles managed to visit a couple of times.'

'Well, he must have done, mustn't he?' Mrs Garner responded drily. 'Otherwise I wouldn't be looking forward to a grandchild.'

Beth summoned a shaky smile but inside she was giving a sigh of relief. She was back now, keeping up appearances as Charles's wife, and if her mother ever got to know that she was doing so only be­cause he had threatened to apply for custody of their child, with all the attendant publicity the court case would create, doubts cast upon her daughter's fitness for bringing up a child—no doubt with sal­acious tales of her sojourn in France with a man who had ended up proposing to her—she would be more than horrified.

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