Julie licked her dry lips, unable to leave without knowing the truth.
"And-and was that your intention?" she asked unsteadily.
My-intention?" Rhys brushed past her to take a knife from the rack hanging on the wall beside the cooker. It was a vicious-looking weapon, with a narrow, sharp-pointed blade. "I"m a man, Julie, and for years I"ve been used to taking what I want when I want it. You know-or you may have guessed, it doesn"t matter which-that I"ve lived in Africa, lived by rules you wouldn"t begin to understand. You have a beautiful body, and you arouse me. What do you think my intention was?"
Julie couldn"t stop shaking. Her knees were knocking, and she prayed he couldn"t hear them.
He halted before her, the knife hanging loosely from his hand. The primitiveness of his attire combined with the darkness of his skin reminded her of his alien background, but the core of excitement inside her was not motivated only by fear.
"Well?" he said grimly. "What are you waiting for? Surely you"ve heard enough about me by now to know that I have little respect for anything or anyone."
"I"ve heard nothing about you," she denied swiftly, wrapping her robe more closely about her.
"No? And of course, you"ve never speculated." His lips twisted.
"Forgive me if I find that hard to believe."
"What am I supposed to have heard about you?"
He uttered a short laugh. "Ask Nerys. She"ll be only too willing to oblige." Then he cast a wry look towards the ceiling. "Which reminds me, she"ll be wondering why I"ve been so long..."
Julie gulped sickeningly. His words, and the mocking glint in his eyes, struck through the cloak of intimacy she had been consciously weaving about them. The wind whistling outside, the warmth of the kitchen, attending to his injury-all these things had brought her closer to him, had aroused an emotional response which in the cold light of day she would despise herself for. And now he had put into words the suspicion which she had nurtured for the past three weeks, and she hated him for it.
She took a jerky step backward, away from him, and came up against the edge of the table. "Then perhaps you should get her to take the gla.s.s out of your foot," she got out tightly.
"Nerys wouldn"t soil her hands on anything so coa.r.s.e," he retorted abruptly. "Oh, go away, Julie, before I change my mind."
"Change your mind?"
"Yes," he muttered, through clenched teeth. "Change my mind!
About-this-"
And dropping the knife to the floor, he reached out and put his hands on her hips, drawing her resisting body towards him.
Julie"s hands against his chest were no great barrier to overcome, and when her thighs encountered the muscled hardness of his, her own body betrayed her. She looked up at him through startled eyes and saw the darkening emotion in his eyes before his mouth descended on hers. If he had been brutal with her, she would have fought him all the way, but instead his mouth moved softly and caressingly over hers.
He held her closely, his arms supporting her as weakness invaded her legs and made it impossible for her to draw away. Then he parted her lips, and the hardness of his mouth brought an upward surge of sweetness flooding her being. She was drowning in sensual feeling, vertiginous, oblivious to everything but the thrusting urgency that made her cling to him, her sleeves falling back as her bare arms wound themselves round his neck. She knew what she was inviting, but for once in her life she was without the will, or the desire, to resist.
"Julie!" he groaned hoa.r.s.ely, more aroused than he could cope with, burying his face in the thickening glory of her hair, stroking her shoulder laid bare by his questing hands.
To the boy standing in the doorway, his face waxen-pale in the artificial light, they must have looked pagan and abandoned, intent only on the satisfaction of their senses, entirely wrapped up with one another, uncaring who could see them.
Julie saw him first, over his father"s shoulder, and something inside her wept for the despairing look she could see oil his face.
"William!" she gasped, when Rhys would have possessed himself of her mouth again, and the word tore than apart more thoroughly than any douche of cold water could have done.
Pushing her almost roughly away from him, Rhys turned, his son"s name on his lips, but the doorway was empty. William had gone.
"Are you-"
"Sure? Yes, of course I am," she gulped chokingly, fastening the belt of her robe around her. "He was there 1"
"G.o.d!"
Rhys limped across the room, and she took a couple of uncertain steps after him. "Where are you going?"
The look he turned on her was enough, and she made a helpless gesture with her shoulders. "Your... foot..."
"To h.e.l.l with my foot!" he retorted savagely, and strode out of the room.
Back in her room, Julie climbed wearily into bed. She was cold now, cold and miserable, sick with the realisation of what she had done.
For there was no doubt in her mind that she had been to blame-for everything. If she had gone back to bed, either when first he suggested it in the hall, or later after she had been unable to use the knife on his foot, none of this would have happened, and now she strained her ears to hear any sounds from William"s room further along the hall.
But outside the sea was lashing itself into a fury on the rocks below, and the crying of the wind through the eaves was human enough to disguise any other sounds which might be heard. Julie had never listened to the forces of nature released with such elemental violence, and she buried her head under the pillows, as much to hide from the world in general as to escape the angry force of the storm.
Not that she could hide, or close her ears, to the contempt she felt for herself and for the man who could come from one woman"s bed and show himself capable of possessing another. She had never been so close to a man before, and even now, contemptuous as she was of her own weaknesses, she could not completely dispel the treacherous needs he had aroused inside her. Despite what she felt was a modern outlook, she was, like many girls of her age, more experienced in the theoretical practices of s.e.x than the physical ones. She had not known she could feel the way. she was feeling now, but the remembrance of his hard body against hers could still bring a yielding lethargy to her bones.
Oh, G.o.d, she thought sickly, rolling on to her stomach, burying her face in her pillows, if William had not appeared in the doorway, what might she have done..,?
The wind was abating, and the faint light of morning was probing her curtains before Julie fell asleep, but then only fitfully, aware that somehow she had to get up and behave as though nothing had happened in a couple of hours. And not for her sake-but for William"s.
She did not dare to speculate on what his reactions to last night"s scene might be. What had his father said to him? What explanation had he given, if any, and how could anyone excuse their behaviour?
What if Rhys asked her to leave? What if he decided it would be the best thing for all of them if he employed the older woman he had intended in the first place? Why did that prospect fill her with such dismay? Because, in these few short weeks, she had begun to care for William in a way that made the idea of leaving him again almost impossible to contemplate.
She dressed in slim-fitting jeans that flared at the ankle and a navy knitted shirt, and as she did so, she considered whether she should try to speak to William herself before breakfast But although she went along to his room, there was no sound from within, and she did not have the courage to turn the handle and walk in. Besides, she justified her timidity, he could still be sleeping. He had had a disturbed night, after all.
She breakfasted alone in the dining room. Someone had swept up the gla.s.s and nailed a board across the gaping pane which the wind had smashed the night before. Julie wondered if Rhys had done it himself, or whether .it had been Haggar who had discovered the mess on his morning rounds.
As she ate her toast and drank her coffee-she had been unable to face anything heavier-she tried to compose what she would say to Rhys when she saw him again. She wondered what explanation he had given Nerys when he finally returned" to her, and this, more than anything else, made Julie face facts. Somehow she had to show Rhys that what had happened between them meant nothing to her, that it would never happen again-and later, convince William of the same.
The library was deserted when she positioned herself at her desk at nine o"clock, and despite the heat of the fire which Haggar had laid for them, a clammy chill descended upon her. Rhys had always been there before her, had always been waiting for her on her arrival. His absence put the spectre of her dismissal more sharply into focus.
Refusing to accept that possibility, she honed her pencils to a sharper point, and opened her notebook in readiness. Ten past nine. Perhaps he had gone to see William. Or perhaps he was still with Nerys...
Getting up from her chair, she moved across to the windows. The aftermath of the storm had left the grounds around the house littered with broken twigs and branches, leaves spread like confetti across the gra.s.s. The sea this morning was a slate grey in colour. Slate grey...
She turned round abruptly, and as she did so, the door opened and Rhys himself came into the library.
Immediately Julie wished she was sitting down doing something, anything, rather than appear anxious at his nonappearance. Instead of which, she stood uncertainly in the window recess, waiting for him to say the words of dismissal she had convinced herself were inevitable.
In black suede pants, and a black silk shirt, he had the sombre countenance of an executioner, and she could not believe he had anything good to say to her. But he was no less attractive than he had been the night before, and she wondered how Nerys could hope to hold a man like him without even the frail obligation of a wedding ring.
"I"m late," he said, non-committally, walking towards the desk. "I"m sorry; but I had to ring the glazier to come and attend to that pane of gla.s.s in the dining-room."
Julie"s breath escaped noisily, and recovering herself she walked quickly to her chair and sat down. "That"s all right," she managed huskily, picking up her pad.
Rhys regarded her beat head for a few moments, and then he said, half angrily: "I have no intention of apologising, you know."
Julie"s head jerked up, her cheeks crimson. "I never suggested you should."
"And you"re not about to offer me your resignation?"
Julie drew a trembling breath. "Is that what you want?"
His eyes narrowed. "No." He .paused. "I have no complaints about your work."
"Thai-then shall we get on?"
He sighed. "Very well." Another pause. "It won"t happen again."
"No."
"You appreciate that?"
"Of course." Julie found there was a definite ache at the back of her throat now, and her eyes felt absurdly tight. "Is-I- was William all right?"
"Only time will tell," he replied quietly. "So we"ll continue, shall we?
I want to change the last two pages of typescript I don"t like that scene with Harriman."
Julie determinedly put her own feelings aside, and concentrated all her attention on the novel, and when Nerys interrupted them almost two hours later, they were both engrossed with dictation.
"Rhys!" she called, from the doorway. "The glazier"s here. Will you speak to him?"
Uttering an oath which only Julie overheard, Rhys threw down the fountain pen he had been twisting between his fingers as he dictated, and strode irritably towards the door.
"Where is he?"
"In the dining room, darling. His name"s Meredith, Gavin Meredith-"
"I know what his name is, Nerys," retorted Rhys shortly, and pa.s.sed her without another word.
After he had gone, Nerys lingered in the doorway, raising her dark eyebrows at Julie. "I wonder why he"s in such a bad mood this morning," she murmured interrogatively.
"I don"t know..." Julie wished she would go.
"That was quite a steam we had last night, wasn"t it?" Nerys persisted softly. "Annoying about the dining room window. Did you hear anything, Miss Wood?"
Julie looked down at her notepad, pretending to correct her shorthand. "I heard the window break, yes," she said.
"It must have been quite eerie," Nerys mused thoughtfully. "I"m glad I don"t sleep at that side of the house." She paused. "William was disturbed, too, you know. Rhys had to go down and investigate."
So that was what he had told her! Julie despised him for using his son in that way.
"I-storms don"t bother me," she said at last, realising that Nerys was waiting for her to say something.
"Well, I don"t like them," said Nerys, wrinkling her small nose.
"Broken windows, broken gla.s.s! It"s dangerous! I"ve told Dulcie to be sure and keep her shoes on today. Rhys got some gla.s.s in his foot last night, when he came down to investigate the crash."
Julie wished Nerys would shut up. She didn"t want to be reminded about last night. She didn"t want to wonder whether Nerys was not simply playing with her, taunting her, knowing the truth of what had happened. What if Rhys had told her? What if he had bragged that she had practically thrown herself into his arms? What if they had laughed about it together?
"Gla.s.s can be dangerous," Nerys was saying now. "Haggar had to get it out for him with a knife this morning. I couldn"t have done it? Could you?"
Julie shook her head, and at that moment, Rhys called her. "Miss Woodl Miss Wood! Can you come here for a minute?"
Breathing a sigh of relief, Julie got to her feet and hurried out of the room, pa.s.sing Nerys with a slight smile. Somehow, she did not think Nerys did know the truth of what had happened the night before, but she was astute enough to realise that it was not inconceivable that Julie might have gone to investigate the crash, too. She was probing, that was all, satisfying herself that what Rhys had told her was true.
Rhys was standing in the dining room with a tall, fair- headed young man, dressed in a denim shirt and jeans, a patched leather jacket hanging from his shoulders. The stranger looked with evident interest at Julie, and she liked his square, good-looking face, the twinkle in eyes as clear and blue as the sea on a sunny day.
"Gavin Meredith," said Rhys abruptly, intercepting their smiling exchange. "My secretary, Miss Wood."
"Julie Wood," said Julie determinedly, and Gavin"s grin deepened.
"h.e.l.lo, Julie."
Rhys"s expression hardened. "When you"ve finished with the pleasantries, I"d like you to go and tell Mrs. Evans that there"ll be one extra for lunch. I want-him to go over all the windows while he"s here and check for possible weaknesses. I don"t want a repet.i.tion of what happened last night"
Julie"s eyes encountered the cold greyness of his, and she nodded her head. "Yes, Mr. Edwards."
Her deliberately formal use of his name set him apart from herself and the young glazier, but she couldn"t stop herself. After her recent conversation with Nerys, she felt raw and vulnerable, and for some reason she had to prove to herself that he was not" as indifferent as he seemed. But she aroused no reaction that she could see, and with a feeling of impotency, she left them.
When she came back, Rhys had disappeared, and only Gavin Meredith was crouched on his haunches, taking tools out of a canvas holdall. He grinned when he saw her, however, and straightening said: "I haven"t seen you here before."
The desire to be friendly had dissipated somewhat now that Rhys was not there to bait, but Julie was seldom impolite, and she said now: "No. I"ve only been working here a few weeks."
"I haven"t seen you about the village either," he said, his accent soft and lilting, making his voice a pleasure to listen to. There were no undercurrents here, and Julie found herself relaxing.
"Actually, I haven"t been into the village yet," she confessed, and as she did so realised that since coming to Devil"s Mount, she had had neither the time nor the inclination to do so.
"Don"t you have any time off?" he exclaimed, shedding his leather jacket, and she shrugged.
"I suppose I do. But there isn"t a lot to do around here, is there?"
"There is if you know where to look for it," he replied, his eyes frankly admiring. "I"ve got a motor-bike. Would you come out with me some time?"
"You don"t waste any time, do you?" she laughed, feeling the tension of the last few hours seeping away from her.
"No." He looked at her steadily. "I may not get another chance for months."
"Then I"ll have to break another window, won"t I?" she teased, enjoying the exchange.
"No need to do anything so drastic." Gavin was watching her closely.
"My number"s in the book. There are telephones here, aren"t there?"