Hold Back the Dark Page 15

  ‘No, I did not. But nor did I try to change his mind. He would have given you no support. I’m fond of him, but any sign of real trouble and Nigel gives up. Abroad or in the next town it would have been the same. He wouldn’t have been around.’

  That summed Nigel up, a charmer, a weakling who had soon failed her and then tried to shift the blame.

  ‘Why did you come?’ she asked.

  ‘I felt responsible for you.’

  His horse had thrown her, his kin had deserted her. He had broad shoulders for carrying the load, and she said huskily, ‘I’m glad I didn’t know.’ She had been a case for charity, but it didn’t do much for her pride. ‘I must have looked a wreck.’

  ‘You looked very small and very hurt. And there was this old man sitting by your bed with tears pouring down his face.’

  ‘Danny doesn’t cry,’ she said stupidly.

  ‘He cried for you.’

  ‘So you promised him you’d get me back.’

  ‘I promised him. And myself.’

  ‘Thank you.’ That was inadequate, and he smiled again.

  ‘You didn’t always think it was such a good idea. You weren’t that anxious to rejoin the human race.’

  ‘I opened my eyes when you were there?’ asked Clarry.

  ‘Several times. The last time you were waking.’

  ‘After that Danny asked you to stay away?’

  ‘What he said seemed reasonable. The last thing I wanted was gratitude. You were recovering, you had your friends.’

  ‘But I didn’t have you.’ The words exploded in her brain like a blinding revelation. Nicolas crossed the room, coming closer to her, and she jumped up, her voice shrill and accusing. ‘Damn you, you should have been there—I needed you, I was looking for you! Not for Nigel, I hardly ever thought of Nigel again, but you were never out of my mind. You were the one I needed, you were the one who was missing.’

  When there was a tapping on the door neither moved. When it came again, light but persistent, Nicolas answered it, opening the door and saying curtly, ‘I want nothing, except not to be disturbed again.’

  He closed the door and locked it. ‘Mrs Haines,’ he said. ‘Any message for the outside world?’ Clarry shook her head, ‘I should have come back,’ he said, coming to her now, and she said fervently,

  ‘I wish I could have opened my eyes and seen you beside me.’

  ‘So you can.’ He smoothed down her eyelids with the gentlest of touches, then picked her up and carried her to the bed. She lay there for a moment, eyes closed. She could have been anywhere, but she was conscious of him. She could smell the faint aftershave, the coolness of his skin. She could feel his breath and hear the beat of a heart that could have been his or her own.

  Then he said, ‘Clarry,’ and her eyelids were heavy as if she was waking from a deep sleep. She saw him muzzily at first through her long lashes, then so clearly that if she had never seen him again she would have remembered how she was seeing him now when she was old.

  Crazily, she was weak. She could hardly lift her head, and her lips were so dry that her voice was faint, but thankfulness swept over her because he was here, where he should have been after he had called her back from the shadows. ‘Hold me,’ she whispered, and he held her close, cradling her, until she felt his strength in her blood.

  ‘Don’t leave me,’ she said, as she would have said nearly two years ago.

  ‘I won’t,’ he promised.

  For a while all she needed was having his arms around her. If he had been there for her, during the long haul of her recovery and the dark nightmares, she would never have been afraid. She asked, ‘If Danny hadn’t asked you to stay away, would you have come back?’

  ‘Yes, I would.’ She believed him. She would always believe him, because she knew in her heart that he would never lie to her.

  ‘Then he’s got a lot to answer for,’ she said. ‘I was so angry with you. I felt you’d cheated me.’

  She lay in the curve of his arm, looking up at him. ‘I was cheated too,’ he said. ‘I hadn’t seen you smile. I waited for that and then I missed it.’ She smiled for him, her senses swimming, seeing something in his eyes that turned her bones molten. ‘Danny couldn’t tell me what I wanted to know,’ he said. ‘How your voice sounded, how you laughed and moved.’

  It was hard to believe that when he walked away for the last time she had not called after him, ‘Come back!’ She said, ‘I wasn’t doing anything much then, was I?’

  ‘At first you were in some faraway place where nobody could reach you.’

  He would always reach her, no matter how far away she was, and she said, ‘Danny said I was a challenge for you. You said you’d get me back and you wouldn’t be beaten.’

  ‘That might have been how it started, but before long it was like life or death.’ She could have been trapped in the limbo of a living death, but he said, ‘Mine,’ and she gasped at that. ‘I had a compartmentalised mind, I could function as usual professionally, but whenever I could get away I went back to you. It was as if you’d always been very dear to me and your recovery would be the best thing that could ever happen.’

  Clarry was so glad he had felt like that. That some time she had been the best thing. She nestled very close and she loved the sound of his deep voice. She could lie here for ever, just listening to him.

  He said, ‘Then he talked about you being too grateful and I realised I was getting too possessive. He loves you, your “grandfather”, he wanted you to have the chance of living your own life, and I felt that he must know you best.’

  She shot upright. ‘Well, he didn’t!’ Her vehemence made him smile.

  ‘At least he was a disinterested party. He wanted nothing for himself.’

  ‘What did you want?’ she asked.

  He still held her, and she looked at him and wanted him more than she had ever wanted anything or anyone.

  He said, ‘I wanted to see you getting stronger, hear your secrets, buy you presents, take you places.’ The tenderness in his voice and his smile made her the richest woman in the world. ‘Get into your mind,’ he said, ‘steal your soul, watch your hair grow.’ He stroked along the silver streak and she felt that the tendrils of her hair must be curling and clinging around his finger.

  She laughed softly. ‘Where would have been the harm in that?’ Of course there would have been danger, but she would willingly have paid any price, and she teased, ‘But you gave up on me.’

  ‘I always knew how you were making out,’ he told her.

  ‘Did you fix it for us to come here?’

  ‘No, the Mountjoys did me a favour there without realising it. But I would have engineered a meeting before long. It was high time.’

  Nearly two years was a long time, and in her ignorance she could have kept away from him for ever. She wondered, ‘If Danny hadn’t told me what happened would you have told me?’

  ‘Eventually. I hoped you might remember.’

  ‘I do remember.’ Nicolas had always been in her subconscious, under her skin. Now the confusion had cleared from her mind she could recapture her dream images and recognise the face she had looked for when she woke. But then she was a caricature of today’s glowing girl, and she asked, fishing shamelessly for compliments, ‘How did I turn out?’

  He grinned. ‘Much as I expected, all spark and spirit.’

  Showing too much spirit at times. Clarry pulled a contrite face. ‘Sorry about some of the things I said. They must have made you consider dumping me again.’

  ‘There were times when I thought, I don’t need this.’ She held her breath. ‘But I did,’ he said. ‘I do.’

  ‘You need me?‘

  That was what he had just said, but she wanted to hear it again. ‘I need you,’ he said. His voice was rough and urgent, and a slow fire was creeping through her, making her gasp for breath. The clothes she wore were heavy, suffocating. Her coat dragged her down and she fumbled with buttons, getting it open.

  Her finger
s were thumbs, and when his hands took over she said, ‘Thank you,’ as if he was helping her out of a raincoat rather than stripping her to the skin. His hands were trembling too, she felt their unsteadiness, and she tried to make it easier. If she had stayed in the red dress she could have been out of that in no time, but now she had to squirm down from the sweater he was pulling over her head and out of her jeans. Fever would consume her if she didn’t get cool air to her body, and her bra straps slipped and the fastener was tricky, and he tore it apart and as it fell from her she gasped, ‘Turn out the lights.’

  ‘Why?’

  She looked down at herself and wondered when her shoes had come off and her tights, and said, ‘I’m not that gorgeous,’ as if she was looking at herself for the first time.

  ‘Oh, yes, you are,’ he said.

  She was on fire for him. Nothing else would assuage the agony that was raging through her, and he kissed the leaping pulse in her throat and his lips never left her skin, and she closed her eyes as the light kisses ran over her.

  When he was naked above her, the lines of a John Donne poem she had learned long ago were almost her last rational thought... ‘If ever any beauty I did see which I desired and got, ’twas but a dream of thee...’

  After that she was beyond reason and into an orgy of uncaring bliss, where everything happening to her was sending her wild. She revelled in every inch of her body and his, the slow, sensuous build-up had her moaning, and his mouth was covering hers and her tongue writhed and fought and tempted like a snake.

  This was lust and love, and she trusted him so that she held back in no way, giving all that she had to give and letting the incredible pleasure he was giving her soak into every pore, fuelling the white heat until the volcanic conclusion sent her higher than heaven but still clinging to him. He was holding her together as she burned and soared, and falling she knew that she screamed, or laughed, or both, and hardly knew if she was living or dying.

  She came round wondering if she had passed out, because she was under the coverlets now, snug in the bed. Nicolas lay beside her looking down at her as if he had been waiting for her to open her eyes, and this was how she always wanted it to be, waking to find him here, taking her naked body in his naked arms.

  It wouldn’t always happen, she knew that, but it did now, and she had experienced such joy through his hands, through all of him, that echoes of ecstasy were still throbbing in her heartbeats and her pulses.

  She was spoiled for any other man’s lovemaking. She would never find another lover like him, and she pressed her face against his chest, the dark hairs tickling her nose, and heard herself sigh. ‘Fiona said you were sensational.’

  ‘Sensational at what?’

  ‘Well—’ she raised her head and wished she hadn’t said that ‘—this, I suppose.’

  ‘That’s flattering.’ It was making him smile. ‘Especially as we never got beyond the platonic.’

  ‘Are you sure?’ she asked, and giggled at the daftness of that, and because she was high on happiness.

  ‘Are you suggesting I don’t know the difference between platonic and this?’ The giggles took over as he held her, squeezing the breath out of her, so close that they fitted perfectly and she could feel him against every inch of her.

  So it had been wishful thinking, wishful hoping on Fiona’s part. Nicolas said, ‘It’s King’s Lodge that Miss Stretton lusts after.’

  And the status that went with it, although Clarry was sure of her facts when she teased breathlessly, ‘Believe me, she lusts after you, especially when you’re bullying poor Nigel. Don’t you fancy her? She’s a very classy lady?’

  ‘Very classy,’ he said solemnly. ‘Well up in the well-dressed lists. But I never had the slightest urge to tear her clothes off.’ His hand stroked Clarry lightly, sending little shivers of delight through her, while he talked on.

  ‘When I bought the house it was obvious that Fiona Stretton could come with it, and I was surprised to find that the offer didn’t appeal to me. It had been some time since I’d found any woman particularly engrossing, but she could have been an exception. Physically. Mentally she’s a boring little snob. But physically she’s attractive enough, and she was available, and she left me cold.

  ‘Just as others had. They all seemed to lack something. I couldn’t have said what it was and I didn’t know where to look for it, until last month when I saw a woman walking down Regent Street. Her hair was loose and dark and she was wearing a yellow coat and hurrying so that a yellow scarf flew out behind her. Before I caught up with her I saw that she was a stranger, but at first I’d thought that she might have been you.

  ‘I’d always taken it for granted that we should meet again, walk into the same room somewhere or come face to face in some town. But after the woman in Regent Street I’d waited long enough. I wasn’t leaving it to chance any longer. I had to see you again, and soon. You’d look different, of course, but I’d recognise you, although I was almost sure you wouldn’t know me. But I had to find out if what I’d felt for you when I walked away from your bed could have grown into something a great deal stronger. If you could be the reason other women wouldn’t do.’

  With a half laugh he said, ‘When I saw Rickard Restoration suggested for repairs I got back to King’s Lodge and waited for you.’

  ‘And found me, lying on the King’s bed.’ Opening her eyes and seeing him, almost remembering. Clarry said huskily, ‘What you felt then had grown?’

  ‘As though we’d never been apart. From the first day I had a hell of a job keeping my hands off you.’

  ‘That’s nice.’ She ran fingertips over his face, tracing the off-centre bone of the hooked nose, touching the strong sensual mouth, thinking what a feeble word ‘nice’ was to describe the bliss of knowing that she could roam anywhere, that this man’s body was her kingdom as hers was his. ‘So why didn’t you stay with me after the storm?’ she asked.

  ‘I might have thought I’d be taking an unfair advantage.’

  ‘Oh, no.’ She shook her head. ‘I don’t buy that; that wouldn’t have stopped you. Didn’t you want to?’

  ‘Of course I wanted you. So badly that if I’d stayed I’d have been committed. You might not have been, but I would, and that was on my mind all the way back here. Then there was Danny waiting for us, loathing my guts for what he saw as my double-dealing—we’d had a gentleman’s agreement that I’d keep out of your life—and I knew how much influence he has on you.’

  ‘Oh, Danny’s a gentleman all right, but no one alive has that much influence. He didn’t think you’d be good for me, and he’s wrong there.’ She laughed softly with dancing eyes, ‘Because there isn’t any of me you’re not good for.’

  ‘Tell him that, will you?’ Nicolas’s grin was wicked. ‘No need to go into specifics! But if you could bring him round eventually to considering me as a grandson that would make me very happy.’

  There was no laughter in his eyes, and her smile stiffened as she stammered, ‘What did you say?’

  ‘I’m asking his granddaughter to marry me.’

  She heard herself blurting, ‘Nigel said you weren’t a marrying man.’

  ‘My darling idiot, Nigel knows nothing about anything, so he can have no idea how I feel about you. Out in the garden he was asking, “What have I done?” and I couldn’t explain that I was so bloody jealous finding you and him looking like lovers again that I nearly threw him across the room. What I did say was “Get out of my sight,” and that was unreasonable when I’d just ordered him outside to talk.’

  ‘Poor Nigel!’ Now Clarry had to smile when she pitied Nigel. ‘No wonder he needed all that brandy! You didn’t really think we’d gone off together?’

  ‘You had. No, I couldn’t believe you were together, except as travelling companions, but I had to get you back, because when you’re not around nothing seems to have much purpose. I love you, nothing I do or amount to will give me any satisfaction unless I can share it with you. So, will you marry me,
because I don’t seem able to face the prospect of living without you?’

  She couldn’t understand why he was pleading so desperately, because she thought she had said yes. She slid her warm bare arms around him, her hands behind his head, her fingers deep in his thick dark hair. ‘Of course I’ll marry you,’ she said. ‘Of course I will. Don’t ever leave me again.’

  ‘I never did,’ he said, and it was the truth. They had been together ever since he first held her hand in pity, and they would belong to each other in passion and tenderness and never-failing love through all the years of their lives.

  ISBN: 978-1-4592-8500-2

  Hold Back the Dark

  Copyright© 1993 by Jane Donnelly

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