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'Promises. Ah, p r o m i s e s ... But Petra, you don't. At least, you don't keep the promises which that slender infinitely desirable body of yours makes to me.'
She tried to reply, but her m o u t h w a s suddenly dry, and he went on. 'SO I suppose that one,' this time a jerk of his thumb, 'is a little offering for lover boy?'
'How clever of you to guess.' But behind the pert response her torn as brittle as glass.
'So what's that you're mixing? More Valentine cakes?'
'No, these are the last. This is a wedding-cake. Do you remember Joanne Endacott?'
'I think so. Smallish, brown hair— her mother kept the post office?' 'That's right. Well, she's getting married in a couple of weeks. She met Jason—her fiance—on a scuba-diving holi day in Cyprus, and they wanted to have a pair of scuba divers on the top of in cake. Yes, I know,' as Jared rolled his eyes. 'I managed to talk them out of that, but instead I'm having to create a sort of collage of shells, seaweed and the old Greek galley they were diving around—all out of sugarwork. I usually enjoy modelling—but a Greek galley, well . . .'
She pulled a fraught face, but when she looked up his expression was stony.
'You're a cheat, Petra—you know that?'
'W—whatever do you mean?' The cold, repressed violence in his words knocked her back.
'What I say—you're a cheat Whether you know it or not, you 're putting all your creativity, your sensuality—your passion into those bloody cakes of yours. To see you making them—it's like an act of love. The sexual t h e m inside you—all right, you say it's not there,' as she went to interrupt him, 'but it is, and it has to escape somehow, or destroy you. So—you sublimate it in these things.'
His arm swept out contemptuously towards the Valentine cakes, and she took a step towards them as if to protect them from his scathing anger.
'And then there's Sam, of course His voice fell into the room like chip', hacked from a glacier.
'You lavish on him all the rest of the love that's in you.'
'No, that's—'
'Yes,' he cut in savagely. 'And do you know why? Because it's safe for you to do that. A human male might demand more from you than you're prepared to give, might threaten to break through t h a t total exclusion zone you've built round yourself, so you settle for a cat who just wants his tummy tickled . . . ' his lips curled in derision ' . . . and a saucer of milk a day.'
'But you're wrong. Simon—'
'Simon?' Cruelly he mimicked her.
My sweet, you no more love him than this table.' He crashed his hand down on it, so that the mixer shook.
But he's like Sam—just as safe, just as undemanding.'
'And, talking of Sam,' she said, very loudly, 'I've been meaning to ask you, hut I don't seem to have seen you to speak to lately.'
'I had noticed,' he agreed ironically.
'Well, I'm going up to Simon's school for a week the day after tomorrow,' she continued, speaking very carefully. 'It's hi s half-term, and I'll be able to see the house that's being provided for us. So I was wondering—well, would it be too much for you to feed S am once a day? He—'
'You're going up to stay with Polruan?' Jared repeated slowly.
'Yes, on Friday. I'm sorry to ask you, but Sam hates the cattery, and I'm nervous of taking him in case he disappears. Of course, he'll have to get used to it at Easter . . . ' Her voice trailed away as she caught rather an odd expression on Jared's face. 'So if you wouldn't mind?'
'What?' He frowned slightly, as if he had not heard a word she had been saying, and for a moment she had the disconcerting impression that there were two trains of thought running, through his agile mind on parallel tracks. 'No, of course I don't.'
'Oh, thank you. And you needn't worry—he won't scratch you. Not the hand that's feeding him.'
She gave him a rather forced smile. After all, when the time came for Jared to go she didn't really want there to be this cold hostility between them. He'd lost—his lashing out at her like that just now only proved that—but there was no reason for them to be enemies. But he did not seem to notice, so she went on even more brightly, 'Well perhaps I could show you where his food is. He likes top of the milk every morning in that dish there.'
She pointed to the blue pottery bowl by the boiler, then gave a little gasp and looked up at Jared, wide-eyed. 'He hasn't touched it. But he's always come for it by this time, even if he's stayed out all night.'
Going through to the bottom of the stairs, she called, 'Sam, where are you? Get off that bed at once.'
But the big cat did not appear sidling guiltily out from the spare room, and she hurried back to the kitchen.
