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And at that moment she believed him. His obsession with Zanna had been legendary, and it still lived. He probably didn't want it to, but it did. There was nothing he could do about it, and the existence of their child made her impossible to resist.
Beth made a huge effort to control herself, fighting the almost irresistible impulse to lay her head against his chest and weep for the love she had lost without ever having it. If he knew just how much she was breaking up inside he would pity her even more. And that she simply could not stand. So she said thinly, jerking her head away as if his touch, instead of making her yearning for him unbearable, in fact disgusted her,
'I'll believe you—thousands wouldn't!' And he could make what he liked of that, anything, just as long as he never learned the truth—that she loved him so much she would die for him if she had to. 'I think I will go to bed.' She swung on her heels, not looking at him. 'I'd be grateful if you would make my apologies.'
Needless to say, she didn't sleep, didn't even try to. She stared the ruins of her marriage in the face as the light faded from the sky at the end of the glorious June day, alternatively loving and hating him.
The love had begun as an infatuation. She'd been fifteen and yearning over the sexy Charles Savage had been quite the fashion for the village girls. Recently down from Oxford with a first-class degree, he'd driven fast cars and brought a new girlfriend home every weekend, or so it had seemed. His mother had been dead for many years at that time, his father losing his grip on reality. His younger brother, James, had been around then, too. But he'd refused to have anything to do with the ailing family business, leaving it
to Charles to knuckle down and retrieve the fortunes of the family at South Park.
Staring from her lonely window at the purple dusk, Beth wondered what had happened to James. The last she'd heard, through Charles, had been the news of the death of James's wife, Lisa. Somewhere abroad. She should have made it her business to find out more, to write to him, expressing her sympathy. She had never met Lisa; she and James had not even attended hers and Charles's wedding two years ago. There had been a rift between the brothers, that much she had known, although Charles had always refused to talk about the younger man. And, at the time, she excused herself—she had been suffering badly from the miscarriage of her child. Nevertheless, she should have made some effort to express her sympathy…
She sighed. She didn't know why now, of all times, she should be thinking of James. Except that, remembering earlier times, when she'd first fallen in love with the unattainable Charles Savage, she could recall one incident with utmost clarity.
It would have been around five years ago. She and her bosom friend, Alison, had just started up in business on their own, but they'd made time to go to the May Day hop in the village hall. Charles and James had put in an appearance, as they usually did, and of course, by that time, Beth's contemporaries had got over their collective infatuation for the heir to South Park, were going steady with more prosaic, yet attainable local boys.
But not Beth, of course. What had begun as a fashionable schoolgirl crush had, annoyingly, grown into love. Not that she'd confided in anyone, of course. Not even Allie. It was a secret she'd kept to herself—as if it were a pernicious vice—only James, it seemed, guessing the truth.
That was the first time she'd seen Zanna. She'd swept into the village hall on Charles's arm, looking like a rare hot-house orchid in a field of common daisies, and James had followed, a pale carbon of his devastating brother, his features sulky. And later, sweeping her round the floor in a duty dance, James had told her,
'You never did stand much of a chance; Charles was always attracted by the rarer species. But this time he's cast his net and captured the incomparable Zanna Hall, so you, my dear little sparrow, won't get a look-in.'
At the time, she'd been too mortified by the way he'd guessed the truth about her to say a word. Besides, from the way Charles looked at the newest lady in his life, he was clearly besotted. And she wondered now if James had resented his brother's easy conquest of the most delectable females around, and if that lay behind the rift. In any case, shortly after that, James had married. He'd been working abroad at the time, as a civil engineer, and as far as she knew he'd never brought Lisa to South Park.
She wondered, fleetingly, if he had been surprised when his brother had married the insignificant Beth Garner and knew he wouldn't be surprised at all to learn how the marriage had broken up. His long-ago words at the May Day dance had been prophetic.
She woke feeling grim. She had fallen asleep on the wide window-ledge and she stumbled to her feet, her movements ungainly. Feeling her way around the furniture, she located the light switch and banished the darkness.
If only she could banish the darkness within, she thought despairingly, looking at her smooth, lonely bed and knowing she would never get to sleep until something had been sorted out.
One way or another.
Contrary to her earlier, shock-numbed instincts, she knew she couldn't get through the night, the rest of the interminable weekend, without talking this through with Charles.
It would take courage to go to the room he had thrown her out of after her illness. But she could manage it. She had to.
He had taken her to the master bedroom when she'd first entered South Park as his bride; it was there she had known those nights of ecstasy, the immature hope that one day, sooner or later, he would grow to love her as she loved him. There that their child had been conceived.
But, returning from hospital, she had found that her things had been moved to the room she now occupied, and he'd explained that he thought it best if they slept apart until she was fully recovered. Not that he'd been unkind about it, she thought with a tiny shudder. He'd never been unkind, ever; he'd been a considerate, warm, appreciative—if demanding—husband. Even after the accident and her miscarriage, when any affection he'd felt for her had died along with the child they had lost, he had still treated her with respect and politeness.
Which made his cruelty in bringing Zanna and their son here all the more devastating.
Yet he wasn't a cruel man. Self-assured, fairly ruthless in his business dealings, frustratingly enigmatic at times and sometimes impossible, he was all of these things. But never deliberately cruel.
Clinging to that knowledge, she tightened the belt of her silky robe and left her room, her soft mouth set with grim determination. She wasn't going to stand meekly by and watch her life and her marriage fall apart without trying to do something about it.
That Charles would choose to stay with her, having never loved her, particularly since, following the accident and the miscarriage, she had been told she might never conceive again, when he could have the woman who had once dominated his life, and the child they had created together, was a pretty forlorn hope, but she was an optimist, wasn't she? She had to be, to have agreed to marry him in the first place!
But even that failed her as she reached the corner where the corridor turned to lead to the master bedroom suite. With the influx of house guests, all the rooms were occupied, so where else would Zanna sleep, except in his bed?
Walking into that sumptuous room and finding them tangled together in the huge bed was something she simply couldn't face, and the determination that had brought her this far drained out of her, leaving her limp and shaking, leaning against the wall for support, her heartbeats frantic.
But finding them together would settle the thing once and for all, wouldn't it? she told herself tiredly. She couldn't go through the remainder of the weekend not knowing what was going on, not knowing for sure. She was out of shock now, and had to know.
Pulling away from the wall, she walked doggedly on down the dimly lit corridor then gasped with anguish as she saw the glimmer of a night-light from the partly open door of the nursery.
Charles and Zanna had put their child in the room she had so lovingly created for her baby! She didn't know how much more she could endure! Yet, driven by a need she couldn't put a name to, she silently approached the open door, moving like a sleep-walker.
