‘John … our marriage … John married me because he wanted a stepmother for Sally. I knew … he told me … that he could never love anyone the way he had loved Paula, but that for Sally’s sake he felt that he ought to provide her with a substitute mother.’
‘And you were happy with that … you accepted that?’ Brad persisted. There was something here that he didn’t understand. Had she, perhaps, been so desperately in love with her husband that she had hoped that he would change his mind … that he would fall in love with her? His heart ached with pity for her, and anger as well.
‘Yes,’ Claire confirmed.
‘But why?’ Brad probed. ‘Why? Why marry a man who you knew did not love you? A man who could never be a proper husband to you … never give you children … never share with you the pleasure of sexual fulfilment and commitment, the emotional …’ He paused as he saw the way she shuddered at his mention of her lack of sexual fulfilment.
‘What is it?’ he asked her curiously. ‘What’s wrong?’
‘I didn’t mind the fact that John only wanted me as a stepmother for Sally because I didn’t want to have a sexual relationship with him … or with anyone,’ she told him doggedly.
For a long moment they looked at one another.
‘You didn’t want a sexual relationship … with anyone,’ Brad repeated.
Something here was eluding him. There had been no sexual revulsion or rejection in her reaction to him when … Shock, yes … anger too. Shock, anger and arousal. He listed them carefully in his mind a second and then a third time just to be sure that he was not making a mistake and letting his own emotions and responses obscure hers.
He looked away from her and started to release her arm, too stunned by what she had said to know what to say or do, and then he looked briefly back at her and saw that her eyes were brimming with huge tears which she was struggling desperately to control.
‘Oh, hell, come here,’ he muttered roughly under his breath, reacting instinctively to her distress, reaching for her and wrapping her in his arms in a fiercely protective hug, rocking her against his body as he held her tight with one arm and smoothed the silky fineness of her hair with the other and tried to comfort her.
‘It’s OK … It’s OK,’ he told her gruffly. ‘I’m sorry as hell that I upset you. I didn’t … What I said was out of line.
‘Talk to me, Claire,’ he groaned as he felt her body tensing under her attempts to stifle her sobs. ‘Talk to me … Let it all out … Tell me what it’s all about.’
‘I can’t,’ Claire sobbed. ‘I can’t …’
‘Yes, you can … Of course you can … Whatever it is you can tell me …’ Brad crooned the words in much the same way as he had once crooned similar reassurances to his brothers and sisters, comforting them through their childhood woes. Only Claire wasn’t a child, and she certainly wasn’t one of his siblings; his body was telling him that much.
Claire, thank the Lord, was too caught up in her own emotions to be aware of his arousal.
‘Tell me,’ he insisted, and then added with a smile, ‘I shan’t let you go until you do.’
‘There was a man,’ Claire told him reluctantly. ‘Another graduate. Three of us were sharing a rented house. It was my first time away from home … I … I suppose I was very naïve … My great-aunt was very strict; I … I didn’t have very much experience, didn’t know …
‘He … he came to my room. He said the gas in his own meter had run out and he had no money to replenish it. He asked if he could study with me … He offered to make our supper … I … I had just had a bath … Our rooms were very cold and I was wearing my … my nightdress and my dressing gown … I didn’t know … I didn’t think.
‘I … I went over to my bookshelves to get a book I needed. He followed me over. He was standing behind me … He put his arms round me …’ Claire moistened her upper lip, her eyes darkening as she relived what had happened.
‘At first I was too surprised to realise … I thought … I asked him to let me go but he wouldn’t; he just laughed. He started … he started …’ She stopped and swallowed painfully.
‘He started to kiss the side of my neck.’ She gave a small shudder. ‘I didn’t want him to … I tried to move away but he wouldn’t let me go. He started pulling at my dressing gown and …’ Her voice faltered to a standstill.
Brad’s arm tightened slightly around her. ‘It’s OK. Take your time,’ he told her softly.
‘I … Well, I’m sure you can guess the rest. He thought that by agreeing to him coming in I was … I was agreeing to have sex with him. He was furious with me when I refused—told me … called me … I … I thought he was going to force me … rape me …
‘We struggled for a while and eventually I managed to get free. I ran out of the house and into the street. It was raining and I slipped on the wet pavement … John saw me … he was on his way home … He stopped his car and came to help me. When I felt him touch me, at first I thought … I was almost hysterical,’ she admitted huskily, and Brad, remembering the night when he had unwittingly pursued her down a wet street, winced inwardly and cursed himself.
‘Eventually he managed to calm me down and make me explain. He took me home with him … made me stay the night.
‘He was so kind to me, so … so caring … I felt so safe with him,’ she told Brad quietly. ‘So … it was easy being with him and Sally, who, coincidentally was a pupil at the school where I was placed for teaching practice. There was no pressure … no awful feeling that he was about to pounce on me … that I might somehow … that he might think …’
Claire gave a tiny, despairing shake of her head.
‘You must think me very stupid, very naïve … to be so afraid of … of giving the wrong impression, of having someone, some man think … But I’d never felt very comfortable with boys … My great-aunt … And sexually …’
She struggled to find the right words and could only say huskily, ‘I didn’t … Some people don’t … The fact that John didn’t want to consummate our marriage was never a problem for me, and before you make any more accusations,’ she told him, a little more fiercely, ‘I was never tempted to break the vow of … of fidelity which I’d made when we were married. You must find me very … very cowardly and …’
‘No,’ Brad denied. ‘In actual fact I think you’re very brave to have told me what you just have,’ he elucidated gently when she looked uncertainly at him.
What he couldn’t tell her was what he thought of her husband, a man whom she obviously still looked up to but who, as far as he was concerned, had cruelly and selfishly taken advantage of her by using her naïvety and insecurity to trap her into a marriage which had robbed her of any right to discover her own sexuality.
‘How old were you when you and John married?’ he asked her gently.
‘Twenty-two,’ Claire told him.
Twenty-two. His heart ached for her.
‘Don’t look at me like that,’ she cried out fiercely when she saw his face. ‘I don’t want your pity. I wanted to marry John … I wanted …’
‘To deny your sexuality. Yes, I know,’ Brad said.
‘Some people … some women just aren’t very highly sexually motivated,’ Claire protested defensively. ‘They just don’t feel …’
‘Some women … some men are born with only a very low sex drive,’ Brad agreed, ‘but you aren’t one of them,’ he told her positively.
Claire stared at