way.'
'Yes.' She could hear that awful brightness in her voice again. She
drank the rest of her coffee and reached for her bag. 'Well, I'm sure it's
not too late. You've never exactly lacked for female admirers.' Oh,
God, I sound so hideously prissy! 'So it's a fresh start for both of us,
and no recriminations.'
'I hope so.' As she rose, he got to his feet too. 'What are your
immediate plans?'
'I haven't given them much thought as yet,' She summoned a smile.
'I'll probably go back to the States. I liked it there.'
'Why run?' he said. "There's nothing to escape this time.'
Oh, yes, there is. The knowledge that you don't want me any more.
That you'll never kiss me or touch me again. The reality of you living
in this house, married to some rich man's suitable daughter.
She lifted her chin. 'And nothing to keep me here either.'
'Is that the truth?' he said. 'Tell me, Joanna, before I go on my knees to
you and beg you to stay.'
Her heart seemed to stop. 'The joke is over,' she said unsteadily. 'You
said so yourself.'
'I'm not joking, damn you!' He was deathly pale, a tiny muscle
working beside his mouth. 'I bought this house, hoping and praying
that it was for us both. I've dreamed of nothing else but you here
beside me. I'm even using the other bedroom, because I don't want to
sleep alone in that bed. When I wake up there, I want you, my wife, in
my arms.'
He looked at her, and she saw there were tears in his eyes. 'What's
past is done, Joanna. There's a lot we both have to regret, but that
doesn't necessarily cancel the future. Don't go, my darling. Don't
leave me. Because this time I'll follow, no matter how far it is.'
For a moment there was silence, then she took one uncertain step
towards him. In the next instant she was in his arms, held so tightly,
so passionately she could neither move nor breathe.
He said her name, his voice shaking, then he was kissing her deeply,
and without restraint, and she was responding, her heart on her lips.
In between kisses, they spoke the first words of the love neither could
bear to deny any longer. Half laughing, half crying, they reproached
each other.
'I thought you didn't want me any more.'
'I thought I'd lost you forever.'
'Why didn't you tell me? Why did you never say...?'
'Would you have believed me?'
'I believe you now.'
'Yes.'
He said the word, and she repeated it as if it were a vow.
Cal gathered her up in his arms and sat down on the sofa, cradling her
possessively against him as if he would never let her go.
'I've done this all wrong, of course,' he said, smothering the ghost of a
laugh against her hair. 'The plan was to get the cottage exactly as I
wanted it, then start courting you, very decorously, very seriously. I
thought my only chance was to convince you that, whatever might
have been said or done in the past, my intentions were now strictly
honourable.'
'What made you realise that?' Joanna stroked his cheek with fingers
that trembled.
'I think I'd always known it,' he said slowly. From the first time I saw
you, all those years ago—a scared kid in the back of a large car. When
we met again, as adults, I spotted you across the room at some party. I
didn't realise who you were at first, but there was this instant
recognition, which almost knocked me backwards. Here she is, I
thought, the woman I've been waiting for. Then someone told me
your name, and I felt as if my guts had been wrenched out.'
He laughed unsteadily. 'It seemed like life's supreme irony—to see
the girl you wanted above all others, and find out she was totally out
of reach. I had a couple of drinks and argued with myself. It was time
the feud was over and I knew it. Whatever the rights and wrongs of
the situation, honour had been more than satisfied, and maybe this
would be a good way to start repairing the fences, I told myself.
'So I wangled an introduction, and you looked at me as if I'd crawled
out from under a stone.' He groaned. 'It had taken a lot of courage to
come over to you, and I felt as if I'd been publicly slapped for my
efforts. So I decided if you wanted to play rough, it was all right with
me. That whatever you began, I could finish, and that one day, no
matter how long it took or what it cost, you were going to belong to
me completely.'
He looked at her wryly. 'I didn't bargain for the fact that you were
equally determined to keep me at bay. When you married Martin, I
nearly went insane. Your wedding night was the pits of my entire life.
I keep getting these pictures in my mind of the two of you
together—him holding you, touching you as I wanted to do. I drank
myself into a stupor trying to erase them.' Joanna stirred restively in
his arms. 'Cal-—'
'Let me finish, darling, please. I came close to hating you then. But,
all the same, something told me this wasn't the end of the story. I kept
telling myself—wait. Don't get mad, get even.' He paused. 'Then, of
course, Martin had his accident, poor bastard.'
'Cal.' Joanna's voice shook. 'There's something I've got to tell you—to
confess.'
'There's no need.' His hand gently stroked the sudden rigidity of her
shoulder and arm. 'Whatever you did, I was largely responsible for,
and God knows I'm not proud of that.'
'No.' She laid a finger on his lips, silencing him. 'I've got to tell you.
It's worse than you know.' She took a swift, painful breath. 'That was
no accident. I—I killed Martin.'
There was a silence. Cal's brows lifted. 'Literally?' he asked in a
matter-of-fact tone. 'What did you do to him—saw through the brakes
on the car?'
'Of course not!' She was horrified. 'But I might as well have done.'
There was another silence. She moistened dry lips with the tip of her
tongue. 'You say you want to marry me, but I don't think that's ever
going to be possible.'
'I agree it may not be easy at first. But both sides are going to have to
learn to accept it. I'm damned if we're going to drag this feud into
another generation.'
'It has nothing to do with the feud,' Joanna interrupted swiftly. 'It has
to do with me—with the kind of person I am. I ruined Martin's life
when I married him. I destroyed him.' Her hands twisted together, the
knuckles white. 'I meant it all for the best. I wanted to be a good wife
to him. Instead, I made him so wretched that he didn't want to live any
more.'
'Who the hell told you that?'
'He did. And his aunt confirmed it.' She swallowed. 'I can't risk doing
that to another human being. You must see that.'
Cal stared at her, his face suddenly grim. 'There's no danger of that.'
'You can't know that. I didn't know it when I married Martin. I
thought I'd be able to make him happy—to make our marriage work,
but I never could. And it was all my fault. I couldn't love him in the
way that he wanted.' She hesitated. 'In—that way.'
'Are you trying to tell me you don't love me in that way either?' He
spoke gently, but there was an agonised fierceness in his eyes.
'I don't know,' she said. 'I—just don't know. With Martin, I was
hopeless—useless. Nothing I tried to do made any difference. I didn't
know how to help him—how to reassure him. I felt so guilty anyway,
knowing I'd married him without being properly in love. I'd thought I
could pretend, at first anyway, but he guessed immediately. He
accused me...' Tears rose hot and thick in her throat. 'It was
dreadful—a nightmare that went on and on. And I couldn't make it
stop.' Her voice died away.
Cal was gazing at her, horrified understanding dawning on his face.
He said quietly, 'Joanna—are you saying that you and Martin
never...? That you're still a virgin?'
She nodded convulsively. 'Night after night, I tried, but nothing was
any good. He knew I didn't love him properly, and it—affected
him—his manhood.'
'And that's the burden you've been carrying all this time? All that
guilt—all that blame?' Cal shook his head. 'Oh, my sweet—my poor
little love.'
'It was -my fault,' she said intensely. 'When he went out that night, I
knew he was in a desperate state. I should have stopped him.'
'I doubt whether you could have done.' Cal's face was grave.
'But I should have tried,' she insisted. 'I was just using him, and he
knew it. The least I could have done was attempt to save him.'
'No, my darling.' Cal looked at her soberly. 'Martin, poor devil, was a
tragedy waiting to happen. Remember my telling you that we were at
school together? Well, there were question marks about him—about
his masculinity—even then. When you announced your engagement
to him, I told myself I must have been wrong, that we'd done him an
injustice. Now I suspect we were right all along.' He kissed her
quivering mouth very gently. 'Believe me, my darling, if you used
him, you were certainly a lifeline as far as he was concerned.'
'I don't understand.' Joanna frowned in bewilderment. 'Are you
implying that Martin was— was...?'
'Homosexual?' Cal supplied. 'Yes, I think he undoubtedly was, but
not overtly. That was the pity of it all. For some reason, it was
something he wasn't prepared to acknowledge, even to himself,
maybe through family pressure. His aunt, after all, was a formidable
woman with a closed mind. I think Martin made a conscious decision
to deny his own nature, because he was afraid. He wanted to be
straight, to shut the closet door and lead what he thought would be a
normal life. Only he found it wasn't going to be that simple.'
He put a strand of hair tenderly back from her face. 'Your guilt about
not loving him can have been nothing compared to what he felt when
he was actually living with you, trying to be your husband, and
failing. Marriage is an intimate relationship, mentally as well as
physically. He must have been terrified that you would guess the
truth. Eventually, there was nowhere left for him to hide.'
'Oh, my God!' Joanna shuddered, hiding her face on Cal's shoulder. 'If
only I'd known! Maybe I could have helped.'
Cal shook his head. 'Only if you could have made him face up to the
truth about himself, and I doubt if anyone could have done that. In the
end, he found a different sort of courage to solve his problems.' He
took her chin in his hand, making her look at him. 'But you, my
precious girl, have got to stop blaming yourself. Martin chose his own
path. Unfortunately it happened to cross yours just at the wrong
moment, that's all.'
'But I can't just—write him off.'
'Nor can you let him shadow your entire future.' Cal's voice was firm.
'Your relationship was a tragic mistake, I agree, but you seem to
forget it could just as easily have destroyed you, if you'd been in love
with him.'
Her face was still troubled. 'But if I fail you too...'
'You won't.' His hand traced a tantalising path down her slim body
from breast to thigh, and all her senses .surged in excited,
uncontrollable response and need. 'You see,' he told her gently,
'you're the other half of me.'
His arms tightened round her. 'The past has done too much harm
already. So let's start looking forward instead. You and I, my love, are
going to be quietly married by special licence just as soon as it can be
arranged. If there's any music to face, then we'll cope with it together,
after the wedding.'
'They may never accept it,' said Joanna. 'My father—Simon.'
'We'll give them every chance,' Cal promised. 'But it's time we
thought about ourselves—our wishes— our feelings.' He paused.
'Where do you want to spend our honeymoon?'
She smiled up at him, lovingly, lingeringly, the last wistfulness
fading from her eyes. 'Oh, somewhere quiet and romantic and not too
far away, with a four- poster bed.'
'I know the very place,' he whispered, and kissed her.