I can meet you tomorrow morning, if you like?’
‘I’ll be outside at eleven.’ His tone brooked no argument and she nodded, still without looking at him, before turning on her heel and seeking the sanctuary of the steaming kitchen and Arthur’s blunt normality.
All the rest of the afternoon and evening she functioned on automatic, taking orders, smiling, engaging in conversation while her mind ticked away on a completely different plane altogether.
When she had married Blade Forbes she had never considered for a moment that it wouldn’t be forever. Her own parents had died in a car accident when she was four years old and her sister, Sandra and herself had been dispatched to different homes of distant relatives, Sandra to the wilds of Scotland and herself into the heart of London. The two sisters hadn’t been close, the eight-year age-gap proving insurmountable in view of Sandra’s raging jealousy of her beautiful baby sister, but Amy remembered crying as much for her big sister as for her parents in the early days.
It wasn’t until she had reached the age of sixteen that she learnt Sandra had purposely repudiated all contact in the intervening years, and after one shattering, stunning visit to her married sister’s home in Scotland when she had quite literally had the door banged in her face, she had determined to put Sandra out of her life as successfully as her sister had apparently done with her. But … Amy shook her head slowly as her thoughts travelled on. It hadn’t been as easy as that. Sandra was her only immediate family; the same blood ran in their veins; she had wanted, needed her love.
Weak and foolish, Amy thought grimly as she smilingly served home-made steak and kidney pie to a little Japanese couple with three cameras between them. And how she had paid for the insecure feeling of inadequacy that had always dogged her footsteps. She should have been satisfied with Blade, she shouldn’t have wanted more. What was a sister that she hadn’t seen for most of her life, after all?
The somewhat elderly aunt and uncle that she had been homed with had caused her anxiety and insecurity, she knew that now after long, deep conversations with Blade when she had poured out all her doubts and fears. They had been fanatically strait-laced, with a list of dos and don’ts that she had never got the hang of, and her outstanding beauty had alarmed and repelled their austere, bigoted minds from the word go. She had been taught that she was undeserving and wayward, that her beauty was in some way shameful, from the first day that she had lived with them, and although something in her had always rebelled against such harsh reasoning some of the poison had got through.
But Blade had changed all that. She took a deep breath as her heart pounded painfully against her chest. He’d brought out all the old festering sores, held them up to the clean, purifying liquid of logic and reason, and in the process washed the wounds clean. And because of that she had felt strong enough to try and see Sandra again. And what she had seen and heard had appalled her.
Enough, Amy, enough, she told herself fiercely as she stared out into the dark night outside. An hour to go and you’ll need all your wits to talk to Blade. Several cups of strong black coffee now and no more post-mortems.
When she emerged from the warm, cosy interior of the restaurant just over an hour later she thought for a moment that Blade hadn’t come, and her stomach lurched churningly, whether in relief or disappointment she wasn’t sure. And then she heard her name at the same time as he emerged from the shadows across the other side of the road.
‘Where’s your car?’ she asked weakly, as he reached her side. He was dressed casually in jeans and black leather jacket and he’d turned her legs to water.
‘Quite safe.’ His voice was mocking with a hard bite of cruelty. ‘I thought we would walk the short distance to your lodgings.’
‘You know where I live?’ she asked in alarm.
‘Of course.’ He looked down at her, slender and waiflike against his hard masculine bulk. ‘The private detective I hired to find you is both thorough and discreet and excellent at his job.’
‘He would be,’ she answered dully. Blade only tolerated the best.
‘Come along.’ He took her arm in a firm grip as he turned her in the direction of Mrs Cox’s little guest house, and although the contact was brief the heat from his fingers seemed to burn her arm. She had jerked away before she could check herself and as his body stiffened at her side she cursed the gesture. It would only make him angrier. It did.
‘I’m not a disease that’s fatal on contact,’ he said cuttingly, ‘and another little move like that and I warn you now I won’t be responsible for my actions. Understand?’
‘I didn’t mean—’
‘I know what you meant.’ The hard voice was inflexible. ‘And I’m quite aware that I’m not the person you wish to be with, but as I’m here and he isn’t I suggest you act accordingly.’
They walked the length of the street in silence and she began to feel almost faint with a mixture of terrified foreboding and lack of food. She hadn’t been able to force anything past the huge lump in her throat all day and she hadn’t eaten her evening meal last night. He had eaten the meal at lunchtime with every appearance of relaxed enjoyment, she thought resentfully as they turned into the quiet unlit lane that led eventually to the small row of cottages in which her lodgings were situated. But then, why shouldn’t he? she asked herself honestly. What a mess this was, what a hopeless, terrifying mess.
‘Now then.’ As he swung her round she had no idea of his intention, but as his arms closed round her in an embrace that had her arms pinned at her sides and her head thrown back he took her lips in a brutal punishing kiss that spoke of his fury more eloquently than any words could have done.
She tried to move her head, to break the hold of his mouth on hers, but his force was relentless and she was trapped as effortlessly as a tiny mouse between the paws of a big black cat. The familiar smell of him filled her nostrils and in spite of the knowledge that this was intended as a cruel exercise in submission she found herself responding to his touch in the old way, her body eager for any contact with the man she loved beyond life. He sensed her capitulation immediately, his mouth softening fractionally as his hands moved up and over her straining breasts, caressing her thoroughly and completely before he moved away in a hard movement that almost threw her from him. The whole embrace couldn’t have lasted more than a couple of minutes but as she stood swaying in the darkness, her eyes fixed on his in mute appeal, she felt as though they had made love for hours.
‘I don’t believe it.’ There was contempt and raw scorn in his voice along with something else she couldn’t recognise, something almost bordering on pain. ‘You can kiss me like that after all you’ve done. Who the hell are you, Amy, what are you?’ His eyes were dark and glittering in the single shaft of moonlight filtering down between the newly leafed branches of the huge oak trees bordering the lane. ‘I expected you to fight me, to object—something!’ He was furiously, bitterly angry, she reflected dully as she watched his contorted face in the shadows, more angry than she had ever seen him. ‘I thought I’d met the lot in my time but you sure as hell take the biscuit! Even the trashiest whore wouldn’t …’
He was still speaking as she slid into a dead faint at his feet, her hair fanning out in a golden halo under her head and her face deathly white in the still night.
She came round slowly, her head jangling with a thousand nightmarish images, to find herself held close to his chest as he knelt beside her on the thick grass of the small verge. ‘Blade …?’ She couldn’t speak very well; her brain seemed to know what it wanted to say but her tongue wouldn’t obey.
‘Keep
