of their honeymoon, just how inadequate he found her as a woman, and she had been left in no doubt as to his intentions to replace her in his bed.
Battered and bruised physically as well as emotionally, her dreams and illusions totally destroyed, she had only been able to feel relief that she would not be called upon to suffer his physical assault on her again. The discovery that the papers he had asked her to sign in the days leading up to their marriage had in fact been the power of attorney which gave him total control of her fortune had meant nothing at all to her until her solicitor had worriedly and uncomfortably explained that not only was she now a widow, but she was also completely penniless and her home, Parnham Court, would have to be sold in order to meet all of her husband’s gambling debts. And then, right at the last moment, when she was just about to sign the documents handing Parnham Court over, her solicitor had discovered the possibility of transferring to herself in her own name the freehold of Vine Cottage and its land, under an obscure legal loophole caused by the fact that at one time the cottage and its land had been made over to the gardener.
At first the cottage had simply been a place to live, somewhere to hide away, but as the months had gone by she had found herself growing attached to it, loving it, so that now it was part of her in a way that Parnham Court had never been.
Her father had bought the Court on his marriage to her mother, a gift to his new young wife, and he had kept the house on after her death as a home for himself and his motherless child. He had run his business from the Court and had even set up a laboratory there so that he could enjoy the research on which his fortune had originally been founded.
The patent for the drug he had discovered had run out shortly after his death, so that even funds from that source were no longer available to Rue. For a girl who had never known anything but the comforts of expensive wealth, poverty had come as a shock. But there were degrees of poverty, as Rue was the first to admit, just as she was the first to admit that it was far easier to be poor in the countryside than it was in one of the stark, lonely tower blocks of the country’s inner cities.
She had discovered within herself a strength that she had never suspected could exist, and with it had come a certain peace of mind. Not that she would ever be able to forgive herself for her folly in being taken in by Julian. The young girl she had once been was so alien to her now that she could scarcely comprehend that she and that girl were one and the same person.
She showered in the bathroom off her bedroom, turning quickly away as she caught a glimpse of her nude body in the mirror. Her own nudity was something she had felt slightly uncomfortable with ever since the first night of her honeymoon, when Julian had looked down at her as she lay, shocked and exhausted, on the hotel bed, and told her cruelly just how deficient he found her as a woman.
It was not that there was anything specifically wrong with her shape. She was small, it was true, very narrow on the hips and the waist, with full, soft breasts that she was at great pains to disguise with heavy sweaters and loose T-shirts. No, her abhorrence of her body was caused more by its inward flaws than any outward failings.
Even now sometimes, at night, she dreamt she could hear Julian’s mocking laughter as she wept and begged him not to touch her. Before their marriage he had been so gentle, so caring, so tender, so very much the considerate lover. She ought to have realised it was all simply a ploy, a fac¸ade, but she had been too thrilled and excited by his declarations of love, too eager to believe that he desired her to ever imagine that he was lying.
She had deserved to be hurt, she told herself ruthlessly, towelling her body dry with rough ferocity until her skin glowed a bright peach. Her sexuality was not something she ever allowed herself to think about these days. When she was in the company of other women she listened to their frank exchanges regarding their lover’s prowess or lack of it and sometimes their even franker descriptions of their own needs and desires, and, although she smiled and laughed and made the appropriate comments, inside her body felt dead. They may as well have been speaking in a foreign language when they described their pleasure, so different was her own experience.
She had never experienced sexual pleasure other than fleetingly and tenuously in those early days of their courtship, when Julian had teased her with kisses that promised so much and yet in the end meant so very little. Perhaps if she had not been so sheltered, so naı¨ve, she might have realised the truth, might have queried the sincerity of a man who professed to desire her and yet at the same time seemed content with no more than a good-night kiss.
It had not been with desire that he had come to her on their wedding night but with rage and resentment, and with a determination to let her know exactly what role she was to play in his life. He had entered her brutally and ruthlessly, without making any attempt to prepare her for his possession, taking an almost sadistic satisfaction in her pain and shock, and then, when she had cried out, he had punished her for it, inflicting bruises and contusions on her pale skin which had taken days to heal.
After that first night he had never come back to her bed, and she had been too relieved to care. In that one short night he had ripped away the veils of innocence and naı¨vete´ which had protected her, and she had seen all that her marriage was going to be. She had lived in a state of shock after that, relieved that he continued to stay away from Parnham Court and yet at the same time too proud to seek advice from those who might have been able to help and advise her.
His death had brought about her release in more ways than one, and she had not been able to mourn for him. Now she was a different woman from that naı¨ve, foolish nineteen-year-old girl. Now she reflected hardily that she was better off for what had happened to her, and her life as it was now was richer in all the things that mattered than it had ever been when she was her father’s pampered heiress.
She had no regrets about the loss of her father’s wealth, other than those that sprang from guilt caused by her knowledge that there were many, many needy causes that could have benefited from her inheritance. For herself, she was content as she was, and proud of her own small achievements and the progress she had made towards independence.
It was true, as her solicitor had warned her only this morning, that a bad summer, a freak thunderstorm, anything, in fact, that damaged her flowercrop, could jeopardise her financial position almost disastrously. She had very little money behind her. All the profits she had made so far had been ploughed straight back into the business and, although it was true that she had neither mortgage nor debts to worry about, she still had to live.
She pulled on her housecoat. It had been one of her father’s last Christmas gifts to her, worn and faded now but still comfortable and warm, even if it was a trifle girlish for a woman of twenty-five. There were very few clothes in her wardrobe. The expensive designer things she had bought as a teenager had either been sold or given away, most of them too outrageous to last for more than one fashion season. In the place of the silks and satins she had once worn, she now wore denim jeans and cotton sweatshirts—hardly the sort of thing one could put on for dinner with a man like Neil Saxton, she reflected wryly as she opened her wardrobe doors and checked abruptly.
Why should it matter what she wore? She had no desire to impress the man. Women adorned their bodies in silks and satins so that they would be pleasing to the male of the species, she reminded herself grimly. She had no desire to please the eye or the sexual appetite of any man.
She reached out for a pair of clean jeans and then hesitated, her pride, that same pride that had driven her to accept his invitation in the first place, making her check and turn instead to frown over the few formal clothes she possessed. There were a couple of suits, the one she had worn this morning and a heavier, more winter-weight one, which she wore for important business meetings with her bank manager or her accountant.
There was her raincoat, a classically cut trench-coat in a waterproof stone-coloured fabric, and a heavy navy winter coat she had
