and not before.'
Helen lifted her head incredulously. ‘Really, Jake, this is the twentieth century. You're not my keeper! You can't make me do what you want all the time.'
‘Can't I?’ His lips twisted. ‘I shouldn't bank on that if I were you.'
Helen moved towards the door, but he was in her path. ‘I don't like this conversation, Jake. I wish it had never taken place.'
‘So do I!’ he snapped sharply. ‘Might I remind you that your absence here this evening was responsible.'
Helen sighed. ‘I'm tired. Can't we discuss this in the morning? We'll both be more—well—reasonable, then.'
‘What is that supposed to mean?’ Jake glared at her.
Helen made a helpless gesture towards the glass on the mantelpiece and then seemed to regret the impulse. ‘It doesn't mean anything,’ she denied uncomfortably.
‘You think I'm drunk, is that it?’ Jake made a derisive grimace. ‘Dear God, you've never seen me drunk, Helen!'
‘Nor should I want to.’ Helen quivered. ‘Am I to be allowed to go to bed?'
Jake stepped aside abruptly, but his jaw was taut. ‘Aren't you interested in what I've brought you back from the States? I thought that was why you married me—to retain the material benefits of life!'
Helen looked as though she would have liked to have struck his sardonic face, but she did nothing except clench her fists. Then she walked out of the lounge, across the blue and gold hall with its crystal chandelier casting prisms of light on her pale hair, and up the stairs to her room.
Jake watched her go with impotent fury and then walked back into the lounge, slamming the door behind him. When he finally sought his bed the newly opened bottle of Scotch was three parts gone…
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