bed. Edward Bradbury was there too.
‘What are you doing?’ Phelix had screamed—he was assaulting her mother!
Her father had bellowed at her to leave in very explicit, crude language. But at least her interruption had had the effect of taking his attention briefly away from her mother, and her mother had been able to dive from the bed and pull a robe around her shoulders.
‘Go back to bed, darling,’ she’d urged.
Phelix had not known then which terrified her the more: the violent storm or the dreadful scene she had happened across which was now indelibly imprinted on her mind for evermore.
But there was no way she was going to leave. ‘No, I’ll—’ But she had been urged from the room.
‘We’ll talk about it in the morning,’ her mother had promised, and pushed her to the other side of the door. They had been the last words she had ever said to her. By morning she’d been dead.
A fork of lightning jerked her to awareness that she was in her father’s drawing room with the man she had that day married. It looked as if it was going to be another of those horrendous storms. Rain was furiously lashing at the windows, and as another fork of lightning speared the room Phelix only just managed to hold back from crying out.
‘W-would you mind very much if I left you to wait by yourself?’ she asked, feeling that at any moment now she would disgrace herself by either shouting out in panic or bolting from him.
‘Not at all,’ Nathan replied and, realising he would probably quite welcome his own company, she fled.
Hoping she could get into bed, hide her head under the bedclothes and wait for morning, when her father would have paid Nathan the money he’d promised, Phelix quickly undressed. No way, with that storm raging, was she going to take her usual shower.
She got into bed, but left her bedside lamp on. She did not want to lie in the dark, when she would again see that ugly scene in her mother’s bedroom that night. Phelix closed her eyes and tried to get some rest. It was impossible.
She had no idea what time it was when, wide awake, she heard the storm which she had hoped had begun to fade return with even greater ferocity. It seemed to be directly overheard when there was a violent crack of thunder like no other—and then the lights went out.
Only vicious forks of lightning, in which she again saw her father’s evil face, her mother’s pleading, illuminated her bedroom. Striving desperately to banish the images tormenting her mind, Phelix made herself remember that she might still have a guest—a husband she had abandoned to his own devices.
Pinning her thoughts on Nathan, who had already been dealt a raw deal by her father and who might now be sitting in the drawing room in the dark, Phelix left her room and raced down the stairs. ‘Nathan!’ she called, her voice somewhere between a cry and a scream as thunder again cracked viciously directly overhead.
In the light of another fork of lightning she saw he was still there, had heard her, had come from the drawing room and had seen her.
‘You all right?’ he asked gruffly.
Words failed her. The fact that he was still there showed how very badly he needed that money. ‘Oh, Nathan,’ she whispered miserably, and in a couple of strides he was over to her, his hands on her arms.
‘Scared?’ he asked gently.
‘T-terrified.’ She was too upset to dissemble.
Nathan placed a soothing arm about her shoulders. ‘You’re shaking,’ he murmured.
‘It was a night like this when my mother was killed,’ she replied witlessly.
‘Poor love,’ he murmured, and she had never known that a man could be so kind, so gentle. ‘Come on, let’s get you back to bed,’ he said.
And, when she was too frozen by the empathy of the moment to be able to move, he did no more than pick her nightdress-clad body up in his arms and carry her up the winding staircase, his way lit by fork after fork of blinding lightning.
Phelix had left her bedroom door open in her rush, and Nathan carried her in and placed her gently under the covers of her bed.
‘Don’t leave me!’ she pleaded urgently as another cannonshot of thunder rent the air.
She was immediately ashamed, but not sufficiently so to be able to tell him she would be all right alone, and, after a moment of hesitation, Nathan did away with his shoes, shrugged out of his suit jacket and came to lie on top of her bed beside her. It was a three quarter size bed, but for all she was five feet nine tall there was not much of her.
‘Nothing can harm you,’ he told her quietly, and in the darkness reached for her hand.
She had gone down the stairs with some vague notion that he would feel uncomfortable sitting alone in a strange house in the dark. But here he was comforting her!
Again she felt ashamed. Then lightning lit the room, and she was again in that nightmare of unwanted visions of that night in her mother’s bedroom not so long ago. She clutched on to Nathan’s hand.
‘Shh, you’re all right,’ he soothed. ‘It will be over soon.’ And, maybe because her grip was threatening to break his fingers, he let go her hand and to her further comfort placed an arm around her thin shoulders. Instinctively she turned into him, burying her face in his chest.
Quite when, or how, she managed to drop off to sleep, she had no notion. But she was jerked awake when her bedside lamp suddenly came on—power restored.
‘Oh!’ she exclaimed, sitting up. ‘Oh!’ she exclaimed again. Nathan was still on the bed with her. He got to his feet and stood, unspeaking, looking at her. ‘Oh, Nathan, I’m so sorry,’ she apologised. The storm was over; normality was back.
He surveyed her troubled eyes, her blushing complexion—and more shame hit her. This man had married her—for nothing. He had trusted her father’s word—for nothing. She wanted to cry, but managed to hold back her tears. This man, her husband, had suffered enough without him having to put up with her tears too.
‘You didn’t have dinner!’ she gasped, suddenly appalled, although she could not have eaten a thing herself. But just then the headlights of a car coming up the drive flashed across the window. ‘My father’s home,’ she offered jerkily, though was not taken aback when Nathan declined to rush out to meet him.
‘I’m surprised he bothered,’ he answered, bending to put on his shoes. But Phelix did not miss the hard note that had come to his voice.
‘What will you do?’ she asked, feeling crushed, sorrowfully knowing for certain now that her father did not intend to honour the deal he had made.
‘Frankly, I honestly don’t know,’ Nathan answered tautly, and suddenly Phelix could not bear it.
‘You can have my money,’ she offered. ‘I don’t know yet how much it will be, but you can have it all. I’ll—’
Nathan smiled then, a grim kind of a smile. ‘Enough is enough,’ he said.
‘You—don’t want it?’
Nathan
