Snatching her hand away, she said raggedly, ‘Very well, if that’s what you want.’
When she awoke it was almost ten-thirty, and she was alone in the bed. While her body felt sleek and satisfied, her mind was a jumble of thoughts and mixed feelings.
After her somewhat clumsy attempt to make love to him, mortified by her own inexperience, she had been turning away when he stopped her.
‘Let me go.’ She tried to break free. ‘I’m going back to the flat to spend the night.’
‘I don’t think so. It’s too late.’
Suddenly he rolled and, reversing their positions, trapped her body beneath his. His weight sparked off a heated rush of desire that made her quiver.
Feeling that betraying movement, he put his mouth to her breast and felt her hips jerk in response.
As he recognised that her need was almost as great as his own, his lovemaking was hard and fast and intense, focused simply on the twin goals of pleasure and release.
Caught up in the dark glory of it, her breath ragged, she let go of the hurt and anger and abandoned herself.
This was real. This was enough.
Only it wasn’t.
Despite the explosion of ecstasy, despite the bodily bliss, there was so much missing—the caring, the warmth, the commitment.
She started to cry, and the tears simply wouldn’t stop.
He gathered her up and cradled her to him.
When she was all cried out, he kissed her wet cheeks and, holding her in the crook of his arm, settled her head on his shoulder.
Totally drained, emotionally exhausted, she slept almost at once.
In the early hours of the morning, still tangled in the gossamer threads of a lovely dream of a summer picnic she and Rafe had once shared, she reached out and touched him.
He stirred and turned his head, so that his face pressed into the curve of her neck.
Warm and sleepy, she snuggled against him and felt his immediate response, the hard hammer-blows of his heart as his arms closed round her. Then in the darkness his lips had found hers, and he was kissing her with a passion that once more set her alight.
They had kissed and caressed and made love a second time with an undiminished hunger, before falling asleep again in each other’s arms.
Recalling the piercing beauty of their lovemaking, she felt her eyes fill with tears. She wept then for a lot of things. For past mistakes that couldn’t be altered, for still loving him in spite of everything, but most of all for giving in and going to bed with him.
If she had been strong enough to hold out against him he wouldn’t have forced her, she was sure of that. It was her own need for him that had been her downfall, that had wiped out this last year as if it had never been and left her once more in his thrall.
Despairingly she asked herself, how was it possible to go on loving a man who, once he’d had his revenge, for that was what it amounted to, wouldn’t give her a second thought?
Even so, and though she despised herself, she knew that she might be tempted to stay and give him what he wanted from her, if only Fiona didn’t exist…
But the other woman did exist and presumably she still loved Rafe in spite of everything. Still hoped to marry him.
Poor Fiona.
How was it possible for two women to go on loving a man who was basically rotten?
Three women, if she counted Harriet Rampling.
Out of the blue and for the first time, Madeleine found herself wondering about the relationship between Rafe and his godmother.
How was it that, after he had treated her daughter so shabbily, and apparently reneged on the bargain he had made with her husband, Harriet Rampling and her godson were still so close that she would choose to live in his house?
It didn’t seem to make any sense.
Chapter Seven
MADELINE was drying her cheeks with the back of her hand when the bedroom door opened and Rafe came in carrying a tray of coffee.
He was wearing stone-coloured trousers and a fine olivegreen sweater with a loose, sleeveless jerkin. His thick dark hair, a shade longer than was fashionable and trying to curl, was brushed back from a high forehead.
Needing to be in control, she sat upright and, pulling the duvet up to cover her nakedness, trapped it under her arms.
His eyes on her tear-stained face, he put the tray on the cabinet and, sitting down on the edge of the bed, reached out a hand to tilt her chin. ‘Regrets?’
‘It’s too late for regrets.’ In spite of all her efforts her voice shook betrayingly.
He freed a strand of hair caught in her earring, curled it round his finger and tucked it behind her ear, before cupping her cheek.
There was tenderness in his eyes, in his touch, and, feeling an uncontrollable wave of love, she turned her face into his palm.
The breath hissed through his teeth and then he was holding her close, his mouth muffled in her hair. ‘I think it’s about time we were—’
The trill of a phone cut through his words.
He drew back and, taking the mobile from his jerkin pocket, walked across to the window, saying over his shoulder, ‘Don’t let your coffee get cold.’
There were two cups on the tray, and, as she turned to pick up the coffee-pot and fill them, she heard him say a businesslike, ‘Lombard.’
A second later his voice changed to a softer, more caring tone. ‘Hello, sweetheart, how are you…?’
Fiona, Madeleine realised, and something inside her shrivelled up.
‘That’s good…Yes…yes, that’s right. No, I’m afraid we’re snowed up, you wouldn’t get here by road today. Probably not tomorrow, either…’
Her heart starting to race, Madeleine wondered if perhaps the other woman was in some clinic, and wanting to come home for Christmas?
‘Yes, that would be fine,’ Rafe agreed. ‘I’ll make the arrangements. As a matter of fact it will fit in very nicely with my other plans…’
If Fiona was intent on coming here, somehow she had to get away. The panicky thought was going through her mind when he added, ‘I’ll ring you back in a little while…Yes, yes, I will…Bye.’
He dropped the phone back into his pocket and returned to sit on the bed, making the mattress depress beneath his weight.
She was taken completely by surprise when he asked casually, ‘How do you feel about a trip to London?’
‘A trip to London?’ she echoed blankly.
‘I thought we might have lunch at the Denaught.’
‘Lunch at the Denaught…But I—I thought…’ She stammered to a halt.
‘That I meant to keep you a virtual prisoner?’
Annoyed by his amusement, she demanded, ‘Wasn’t that what you intended me to think?’
Taking a sip of his coffee, which he liked black and sugarless, he admitted blandly, ‘I did mention keeping you with me. But I was hoping to rely on persuasion rather than actual physical confinement.’
Wondering what kind of game he was playing, why he’d suggested having lunch out, she said, ‘Didn’t you just say we were snowed up?’
‘To all intents and purposes we are. But we have a small snowblower