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‘But it’s amazing what people will do, sweetheart.’ He eyed her coldly. ‘You of all people should know that.’ He turned from her, his hard features in profile as he gazed across the grassland. ‘I was hoping it was a lie,’ he said after a few moments. ‘But beating him to a pulp is an indulgence that obviously is denied me. I’ll just have to get my satisfaction in another way, won’t I?’ He didn’t look at her as he spoke and in spite of the warm sunlight she shivered helplessly.
‘Please don’t be like this, Blade—’
He cut off her voice by starting to walk, his back straight and stiff and his body taut. ‘Come on, keep moving. I’m less likely to do something I’ll regret that way.’
‘Blade, please wait.’ She couldn’t bear this coldness, the veiled threats. This wasn’t the Blade she knew. Somehow she had to say something, do something, to defuse his rage. ‘I’m sorry …’ As she reached his side her voice died at the blackness of his profile.
‘Do you know what I’ve been through imagining you with him, Amy? Do you? Do you?’ He swung round for one split second and the ferocity in his face brought her heart into her mouth. ‘I’ve been to hell and back a hundred times a day, day in, day out, and all you can say is sorry!’ He laughed harshly. ‘But those pictures in my mind burnt all the feeling I had for you into ashes …’ As his voice cracked, her hand made an involuntary movement towards him but he had turned away again, the big body rigid and stiff. ‘I realised after a time that I don’t know you, Amy. I never did,’ he said coldly after an endless moment when she felt incapable of speech. What was there to say? She couldn’t explain, justify her actions. He had a right to hate her after all but, oh, did it have to hurt so much? And it wasn’t her fault, she thought painfully, it wasn’t.
They were following a track at the side of a narrow beck with its own little pools and falls which the gurgling water eagerly explored, and as she stumbled slightly, her foot catching a large tuft of wiry grass, he reached out to steady her, his hand freezing midway as though she were leprous.
‘Can I sit down for a minute?’ she asked faintly. She couldn’t walk and talk like this when her heart was pounding so hard it was making her chest hurt. If only he had left her alone then maybe, somehow, she could have tried to derive some sense of peace from knowing she had done what she had to do. But now? Now she was confused and heart-sore and terribly afraid that she would betray herself. If he touched her …
‘Sit down there if you like.’ He indicated a big smooth boulder at the side of the beck, turning with his back to her as he looked out over the land dipping and rising in front of them. ‘How long do you intend to stay here?’ he asked grimly, ‘in Yorkshire, I mean.’
‘I don’t know.’ She was immensely glad he was calm again, at least on the surface. ‘It all depends—’
‘On what?’ He didn’t move but there was something in his voice that made her shiver in the soft sunlight. ‘John’s progress?’
‘I’ve told you, John is nothing to do with all this,’ she said quietly. ‘I came here because it was the only place I could think of at the time where I knew someone, a friend.’
‘A friend.’ The hard voice was inflexible. ‘Quite.’
‘It’s true,’ she said flatly, ‘I promise.’
His laugh was caustic and harsh and made her jump, violently exploding as it did into the soft warm air with vitriolic savagery. ‘You promise me?’ he said scathingly. ‘Well, your track record on promises so far isn’t too hot, is it?’
‘Look, this is getting us nowhere, Blade,’ she said quickly as his eyes raked across her pale face. ‘I left because I realised things weren’t right, that it wasn’t working out. I was trying to be fair to both of us; we were too different …’ Oh, just listen to yourself, she thought in deep disgust at the banality of the phrases. Is this the best you can do?
‘I didn’t leave London and some very important business deals to listen to such unmitigated garbage,’ he said with dangerous smoothness. ‘Things were right, it was working out and you damn well know it. I left you for forty-eight hours to clinch that French deal and came back to an empty house and the original “dear John”. Hell, Amy …’ His temper was at boiling pitch again and she saw him take a deep hard breath before continuing, his voice several tones lower when he did so. ‘You didn’t even offer an explanation.’
