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‘When term resumed after the Christmas recess I decided I was going to turn over a new leaf. I’d talked to my brother—Hugh was eight years older than me, already married then, but still enough in touch with his own youth to listen sympathetically to me— but it seemed that my friends or at least some of them didn’t want me to change. Then I had to start wearing glasses. I discovered quite quickly that people who didn’t know me reacted differently to me...and so gradually I evolved a form of disguise and somehow it stuck with me. There was nothing to make me want to abandon it, until I met you and even then it seemed I wasn’t going to be able to reveal myself to you in my true colours, so to speak.’
Sophy looked questioningly at him and he said drolly,
‘Ah, well, you see I had observed how you reacted to me...and how you reacted to any male who was even just slightly aggressively masculine and I didn’t want to frighten you off. You felt safe with me, that much was obvious and because of that I could get closer to you. Some disguises are used for protection,’ he told her, ‘some for hunting...’ He laughed at her expression. ‘Ah, yes, my poor little love, I’m afraid you...’
She didn’t let him finish, flushing suddenly as she remembered his bland and extremely irritating indifference to her timid sexual overtures in the early days of their marriage...an indifference which she had naïvely thought sprang from unawareness.
‘You knew...’ she accused.
‘Knew what?’ He was smiling dulcetly at her.
She swallowed, and said huskily, ‘That I wanted you.’
‘After the way you looked at me when I came back from Nassau I hoped you might,’ he agreed tenderly, ‘but I had to be sure it wasn’t merely that I was a challenge to you, Sophy. I had gambled too heavily for that. You see,’ he told her quietly, ‘as I soon discovered well before I married you, what I once thought was merely lust turned out to be love and that love hasn’t diminished for knowing you...quite the contrary. That is what I have been trying to talk to you about, Sophy.’ He touched her face lightly with his fingers and she trembled wildly, hardly daring to look at him. ‘We have been lovers, and you have given yourself to me physically with a generosity that no one else has ever matched or ever could, but have you given yourself to me emotionally, Sophy? Can you give yourself to me emotionally or is it still Benson, despite all that he has done to you?’
‘Chris?’ Sophy stared at him. ‘I never loved Chris. Not really, not like...’
‘Not like?’ His voice was placid, belying the expression in his eyes. It made her heart race and suspended her breath until she realised he was still waiting impatiently for her response.
‘Not like I love you,’ she told him.
He expelled his breath on a harsh sigh and said roughly, ‘God, Sophy, you don’t know how you’ve tormented me.’
She smiled at him, going willingly into his arms as he dragged her against him. ‘Oh, I think I’ve a fair idea,’ she told him demurely, ‘after all you’ve done your own fair share of tormenting.’
From the shelter of his arms, she looked up at him, watching the way his eyebrows rose in query.
‘All that parading around practically nude,’ she elucidated for him, ‘making me want you, making me love you...’ She looked up at him again and smiled, ‘and probably damn well making me pregnant into the bargain.’
‘Have I done?’ He looked smugly and irritatingly malely pleased at the prospect.
‘I don’t know,’ she admitted, ‘but, Jon...’ she protested as he turned round with her still in his arms and rolled her onto the bed, following her there, and pinning her down with the superior weight of his body.
‘Jon, what are you doing?’ she demanded.
He was grinning at her and her heart turned over inside her as she read the purpose in his eyes and he told her softly, ‘It would certainly be one sure fire way of keeping you tied to me. Besides...’ He paused to kiss her, smothering her mumbled protest until she was forced to give up and respond to him.
‘Besides...what?’ she asked breathlessly when at last he had released her.
