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When he knocked on the door she went slowly to open it, and then stood there speechless with anguish, with the pain of loving him, with all the things she was experiencing at far too late a stage in her life for her ever to be able to recover from the anguish of the experience.
Her first thought that he must have forgotten something made her stand to one side to let him in.
It must be the quality of the late autumn dusk that made his skin look so pale and his face so drawn, she told herself as he came into the kitchen.
‘I was hoping I’d catch you in,’ was his initial comment. He wasn’t looking directly at her, and in another man she would have put his hesitation, his tension down to nervousness, but Silas had never betrayed such an emotion to her before, and she could only think that this visit was a reluctant one, paid out of necessity; a chore he wished to get over as quickly as possible. What did he fear—that she would lose control completely and fling herself at him, begging him to want her, to love her?
Her self-disgust, never far from the surface these days, welled up sickeningly inside her.
How well now she understood the description ‘lovesick’.
She had thought it was an affliction reserved for teenagers, but she was discovering just how wrong she had been.
‘Are you doing anything this evening?’
Silas’s question, raw, jerky, and delivered in a manner so abruptly different from his normal easy, pleasant style, made her raise surprised eyes to his face, and reply without thinking.
‘No, not really. I had intended to do some work but—’
‘Good, then you’ll be free to have dinner with me.’
Again the way he cut through her hesitant sentence was out of character, just like the tension she could almost feel emanating from him.
‘There’s something I need to discuss with you,’ he added curtly.
Her heart pounded frantically. What did he need to discuss with her? Did he feel that it wasn’t enough to have moved out of her house; that he had to explain verbally as well that he didn’t want her? Did he think she was a complete fool?
‘I don’t think—’
I don’t think that’s necessary, she had been about to say, but once again he didn’t let her finish, saying almost pleadingly, ‘Hazel, please… I wouldn’t normally pressure you like this, but it is important.’
What could she say?
‘Well… well, if you insist,’ she responded doubtfully.
‘Good. I’ll wait here, shall I, while you get ready?’
He’d wait? She stared at him. It was barely six o’clock. It wouldn’t take her much more than half an hour to get washed and changed. She had no idea where he intended to take her, but surely it was still a little early to be thinking of going out for dinner? Unless of course it was more that he wished to get the whole thing over and done with as quickly as possible.
‘Well, if that’s what you want.’
She gave him a questioning, uncertain look to which he responded with a smile so warm, so tender almost, that it rocked her whole nervous system.
Like someone under a powerful spell, she walked blindly towards the door and had opened it and was halfway up the stairs before she realised that she hadn’t even asked him where he was taking her.
She told herself recklessly that if she was going to have to sit opposite him and listen to him while he told her that he had guessed her secret and that for both their sakes he felt he must tell her that there was no possibility of his ever returning her love, she might as well do so looking her best, looking like a woman who might potentially excite a man’s desire rather that one who already knew deep within herself that she had been rejected, emotionally, sexually, every way by the only man she had ever loved.
To this end, she showered quickly and then dressed determinedly in the satin teddy which Katie had bought her the previous Christmas, claiming that it was the sort of thing that every woman ought to have in her wardrobe.
‘But it’s wasted on me,’ Hazel had protested, and as she had said the words an expression of such anger and compassion had crossed her daughter’s face that she had immediately felt seared by the pain of her own lack of sexuality.
‘When you do wear it—and you will,’ Katie had threatened her, ‘make sure you wear it next to your skin with nothing on underneath it.’
Then she had been shocked, repudiating such a suggestion with all the prissiness her father would have approved, but now recklessly she rejected the idea of redonning her bra, and instead slid the cool, silky fabric on to her body, shivering a little as its sensual glide reminded her of Silas’s touch.
Stop that, she warned herself, pulling on the silk stockings that went with it, and then wondering with wry self-mockery why she was going to so much trouble for a man who was going to tell her that he was rejecting the sexuality she was finding within herself so late in her life that it was almost as though its discovery was fate’s cruel way of deliberately mocking her.
Unsure of exactly where it was Silas intended to take her, and aware that he was downstairs waiting for her, she couldn’t dawdle over what to wear, and selected a bright red sweater dress that she had bought several winters previously and then discarded as being too eye-catching for her to wear successfully.
