He swore violently under his breath; the words were foreign to her, but their meaning plain enough.
‘Enjoy it?’ he asked scornfully. ‘How could I enjoy it, knowing that?’ he spat out, then, seeing her look of puzzlement, he relented. ‘Oh, I achieved—satisfaction.’ His mouth curled in distaste as he spoke the word. ‘I should have stopped. . . I would have stopped, but——’
‘But?’
‘It was too late by then,’ he said bitterly. ‘Nothing could have stopped me.’
She knew one last surge of triumph, that the tide had been strong enough to sweep him, too, out of control, and then she sat up, hugging a sheet around her nakedness, willing herself to stem the tears, for now at least. ‘Well, at least you can be sure of not catching any disease—as you were the first!’ she cried.
She saw him glance at her quickly, as if recognising the vulnerability behind the attempt at bravado.
‘It shouldn’t be like that, you know,’ he said, quite softly. ‘Your first time. It should be special.’
It was special, she wanted to scream at him. For me, anyway! But she turned her head away.
‘I would have been more. . .less. . .more gentle. . .’ His words tailed off into an embarrassed silence.
And all at once she knew that she could not tolerate one second more of this humiliating post-mortem. With a shuddering sense of realisation she remembered that she was in a strange country and a strange house, with a man who was now as far away from her as a complete stranger, ever though he lay just feet away, even though he knew her body intimately. A vestige of the Ice-Queen returned as her pride’s saviour.
‘I’d like you to take me back now, please.’
To her shame, he didn’t even try to argue. He merely nodded and stood up, and she closed her eyes to blot out the sight of the body. She still, even now, longed for him to take her in his arms again, to make everything all right, as sweetly perfect as before. . .
They dressed in silence. This time round she noticed the car; she made herself obsessively observe details. The smell of fine leather, the dazzling array of instruments. Anything that would keep her tortured thoughts away from the subject of the man who had so summarily thrust her away from him.
‘Where are you staying?’ he asked at last.
Some last scrap of self-preservation made her lie to him. She mentioned the name of a hotel she had noticed in the adjoining street to her own hotel. The drive there seemed to take forever, and when he stopped the car he turned to her, his troubled eyes betraying that he wasn’t feeling as calm as his exterior suggested.
‘Catriona. . .’ he began.
So she was Catriona now. Not Cat. His Cat. The use of her proper name became the final straw, and she wrenched the door open. ‘Thanks for the memory!’ she said on a sob, before running away down the road, as if demons were on her heel, away, far away, where he could never find her.
‘ARE you all right, Cat?’
Cat turned from the mirror, where she had been adjusting her green theatre gown, her lacklustre eyes regarding Josey Betts, her fellow staff nurse, and a good friend. ‘Sure, I’m all right,’ she answered unconvincingly. ‘Why shouldn’t I be?’
Josey hesitated. ‘It’s just that you’ve been so—well, so strange since you’ve got back.’
‘Strange?’ echoed Cat dully. Perhaps it was true, then, perhaps sexual awakening could be seen in a woman’s eyes. Except that it hadn’t been much of an awakening in her case, more like an ongoing nightmare.
‘I mean, I know you were ill when you came back from Italy——’
‘Yes,’ agreed Cat calmly. III? It had been no disease that her doctor had heard of, that was for sure, but she had been unable to function normally. She had stopped eating and sleeping and laughing—as the stark reality of what she had done came home to her. She had lost her virginity to a total stranger. Her doctor had diagnosed depression, and she hadn’t had the energy to argue with him, and, besides, what would he say if she told him the truth? He would be disbelieving at first, and then, if she managed to convince him of the veracity of her statement, she could imagine the disbelief changing to distaste, disgust. Knowing that the Ice-Queen was no better than a slut.
Physically, the pills had made her feel better. Soon she had stopped taking them, and now she was functioning ‘normally’, except that there was a huge gap where her heart used to be. Mentally, she just didn’t know. How on earth did she go about coming to terms with doing something so completely out of character—and doing something which felt as though it had devastated not only her heart and soul, but her whole future?
She pushed one narrow foot into the white theatre clog. ‘I don’t suppose you know which list I’m down for today?’ she queried.
‘You mean, you haven’t looked?’ Josey gave an amused smile. ‘Well, this will really cheer you up—you’ve hit the jackpot this time, Cat!’
‘Jackpot?’
Josey clicked impatiently. ‘Will you stop repeating everything I say? It makes you sound all dopey, and you’re going to need all your wits about you. You’ve landed the new visiting prof!’
Cat wondered why Josey was doing an excellent imitition of a Cheshire cat. ‘So?’
‘So?’ Josey exclaimed, hitting her hand dramatically on to her forehead. ‘So, he’s a walking dreamboat. Sensational! I tell you, Cat—this one is the business!’
‘Really?’ Cat asked absently. ‘Well, then you’ll have to get to work on him, won’t you?’
Josey crinkled up her freckled nose. ‘Oh, sure,’ she said resignedly. ‘He’s bound to fancy you—they all do.’
Cat shuddered, feeling as though she’d been offered a poisoned chalice. ‘Well, he’s safe from me. I am off men completely.’ Natural curiosity got the better of her. ‘What’s he like?’
‘Italian——’ started Josey, and then stopped when she saw her friend’s white face. ‘Cat, what’s the matter?’
Cat shook her head. ‘Nothing. Nothing at all.’ No point in saying that even the gods seemed intent on compounding her misery. Everywhere she went she seemed to be invaded by images of all things Italian. Or was it simply that she couldn’t get Rome, and that dark, beautiful, cruel stranger out of her mind?
‘You can’t believe how good-looking he is,’ prattled on Josey excitedly. ‘Sister Henderson even said that he should have been a film star—and that, coming from her, well. . .’
Cat knew what she meant. Sister Henderson, only two years off retirement, had once been jilted by her fiancé, and had decided that the rest of the male sex should pay. Cat had always thought her a slightly ridiculous figure. Ironic that after what had happened to her in Rome she now felt she had more in common with the older woman than
