Christmas Nights (30 page)

Their
love…
There had never been any love—at least not on Oliver’s side. Only lust; that was all.

Lisa shuddered. How had it happened? How could anger—not just his but, even worse, her own—become so quickly and so fatally transmuted into such an intensity of arousal and desire? Even now she could hardly believe it had happened, that
she
had behaved like that, that she had felt like that.

Later she would mourn the loss of her love; right now all she wanted to do was to forget that the last few hours had ever happened.

L
ISA WOKE UP WITH A START,
brought out of her deep, exhausted sleep, which she had fallen into just after the winter dawn had started to lighten the sky, by the shrill bleep of her alarm.

Tiredly she reached out to switch it off. She had spent most of the night lying in bed trying not to think about what had happened—and failing appallingly. Round and round her thoughts had gone until she’d been dizzy with the effort of trying to control them.

Shock, anger—against herself, against Oliver—grief, pain, despair and then anger again had followed in a relentless, going-nowhere circle, her final thought before she had eventually fallen asleep being that she must somehow stop dwelling on what was now past and get on with her life.

Her head ached and her throat felt sore—a sure sign, she suspected, that she was about to go down with a heavy cold. The faint ache in her muscles and her lethargy were due to another cause entirely, of course.

Quickly she averted her gaze from the space on the bedroom wall—the place where Oliver had held her as he… as they… The heat enveloping her body had nothing to do with her head cold, Lisa acknowledged grimly, and nor had the hot colour flooding her face.

It was bad enough that she had actually behaved in such an… an abandoned, yes, almost sexually aggressive way in the first place, but did her memory
have
to keep reminding
her of what she had done, torturing her with it? she wondered wretchedly. She doubted that Oliver was tormented by any such feelings of shame and guilt, but then, of course, it was different for a man. A man was allowed to be sexually driven, to express anger and hurt.

But it hadn’t been Oliver’s behaviour—hurtful though it had been—that had kept her awake most of the night, she acknowledged; it had been her own, and she knew that she would never be able to feel comfortable about what she had done, about the intensity of her passion, her lack of control, her sexuality, unchecked as it had been by the softening gentleness of love and modesty.

Women like her did not behave like that—they did
not
scratch and bite and moan like wild animals, they did
not
urge and demand and incite… they did
not
take pleasure in meeting… in matching a man’s sexual anger, they did
not
… Lisa gave a low moan and scrambled out of bed.

There was no point in going over and over what had happened. It wouldn’t change anything;
she
couldn’t change anything. How on earth
could
Oliver have possibly thought that she could want
any
other man, never mind a sorry specimen like Henry…? How could he have misinterpreted… accused her…?

Angrily she stepped into the shower and switched it on.

That was the difference between men and women, she decided bitterly. Whereas she as a woman had given herself totally, emotionally, physically, mentally to Oliver, committing herself to him and to her love in the act of love—an act which she naïvely had believed had been a special and a wonderful form of bonding between them—to Oliver, as a man, they had simply had sex.

Sex. She started to shudder, remembering. Stop thinking about it, she warned herself grimly.

As she dried her hair and stared into the mirror at her
heavy-eyed, pale-faced reflection she marvelled that such a short space of time could have brought so many changes to her life, set in motion events which had brought consequences that she would never be able to forget or escape.

Such a few short days, and yet they had changed her life for ever—changed
her
for ever. And the most ironic thing of all was that even if Henry or another man like him were to offer her marriage now she could not accept it. Thanks to Oliver she now knew that she could never be content with the kind of marriage and future which had seemed so perfect to her before.

Fergus her boss gave her an uneasy look as he heard her sneezing. He had a thing about germs and was a notorious hypochondriac.

‘You don’t sound very well,’ he told Lisa accusingly as she started to open the mail which had accumulated over the Christmas break. ‘You’ve probably caught this virus that’s going round. There was something on last night’s TV news about it. They’re advising anyone who thinks they’ve got it to stay at home and keep warm…’

‘Fergus, I’ve got a cold, that’s all,’ Lisa told him patiently. ‘And besides, aren’t we due to go down to Southampton on Thursday to start cataloguing the contents of Welton House?’

Welton House had been the property of one of Fergus’s clients, and following her death her family had asked Fergus to catalogue its contents with a view to organising a sale. Normally it was the kind of job that Lisa loved, and she thought that it would do her good to get away from London.

‘That’s next week,’ Fergus told her, his voice quickening with alarm as Lisa burst into another volley of sneezes. ‘Look, my dear, you aren’t well. I really think you should go home,’ he said. ‘In fact, I insist on it. I’ll ring for a taxi for you…’

There was no point in continuing to protest, Lisa recognised wearily; Fergus had quite obviously got it into his head that she was dangerously infectious, and, if she was honest, she didn’t feel very well. Nothing to do with her slight head cold, though. The pain that was exhausting her, draining every bit of her energy as she fought to keep it at bay had its source not in her head but in her emotions.

Her telephone was ringing as she unlocked her door; she stared at it for a few seconds, body stiffening. What if it was Oliver, ringing to apologise, to tell her that he had made a mistake, that he…?

Tensely she picked up the receiver, unsure of whether to be relieved or not when she heard her mother’s voice on the other end of the line.

‘Darling, I’m glad I caught you. I’m just ringing to wish you a Happy New Year. We tried to get through yesterday but we couldn’t. How are you? Tell me all about your Christmas with Henry…’

Lisa couldn’t help herself; to her own consternation and disbelief she burst into tears, managing to tell her mother between gulped sobs that she had not, after all, spent Christmas with Henry.

‘What on earth has happened?’ she heard her mother enquiring solicitously. ‘I thought you and Henry—’

‘It’s not Henry,’ Lisa gulped. ‘He’s getting married to someone else anyway. It’s Oliver…’

‘Oliver. Who’s Oliver?’ her mother asked anxiously, but the mere effort of saying Oliver’s name had caused her so much pain that Lisa couldn’t answer her questions.

‘I’ve got to go, Mum,’ Lisa fibbed, unable to bear any more. ‘Thanks for ringing.’

‘Lisa,’ she could hear her mother protesting, but she was already replacing the receiver.

There was nothing she wanted to do more than fling herself on her bed and cry until there were no more tears left, until she had cried all her pain away, but what was the point of such emotional self-indulgence?

What she needed, she acknowledged firmly, was something to keep her thoughts away from Oliver not focused on him. It was a pity that the panacea that work would have provided had been taken away from her, she fretted as she stared round her sitting room, the small space no longer a warm, safe haven but a trap imprisoning her with her thoughts, her memories of Oliver.

Impulsively she pulled on her coat. She needed to get away, go somewhere, anywhere, just so long as it was somewhere that wasn’t tainted with any memories of Oliver.

Oliver was in a foul mood. He had flown straight back to New York after his confrontation with Lisa, ostensibly to conclude the negotiations he had left hanging fire in his furious determination to find out what was going on. Well, he had found out all right. He doubted if he would ever forget that stomach-sickening, heart-destroying, split second of time when he had seen Lisa
—his
Lisa—in Henry’s arms.

And as for what had happened… His mouth hardened firmly as he fought to suppress the memory of how easily—how very and humiliatingly easily—with Lisa in his arms he had been on the point of begging her to change her mind, of pleading with her at least to give him a chance to show her how good it could be for them.

He had known, of course, how reluctant, how wary she had been about committing herself fully to him, how afraid she had been of her own suppressed, deeply passionate nature. Then it had seemed a vulnerability in her which had only added to his love for her. Then he had not realized… How could he have been so blind—he of all people? How could
she
have been so blind? Couldn’t she see what they had had… what they
could
have had?

The American negotiations were concluded now and he and Piers were on their way back north. They had flown back into London four hours ago to cold grey skies and thin rain.

‘Oliver, is something wrong?’

He frowned, concentrating on the steely-grey ribbon of the motorway as he pulled out to overtake a large lorry.

‘No, why should there be?’ he denied, without looking at his cousin.

‘No reason. Only you never explained why you had to fly back home like that and since you flew back to the States… well, it’s obvious that something is bothering you. You’re not having second thoughts about selling off part of the business, are you?’ Piers asked him.

Oliver relaxed slightly, and without taking his eyes off the road responded, ‘No, it was the right decision, but the timing could, perhaps, have been better. When is Emma due back?’ he asked, changing the subject.

His cousin’s girlfriend had been away visiting her family, and to his relief Piers, not realising that he was being deliberately sidetracked, started to talk enthusiastically about the reunion with her.

‘It’s official, by the way,’ he informed Oliver. ‘We’re definitely going to get married this summer. In Harrowby if that’s OK with you. We thought… well, I thought with Emma’s family being so scattered… We… we’re not sure how many of them will want to come up for the wedding yet, but the house is big enough to house twenty or so and…’ He paused and gave Oliver a sidelong glance.

‘I… I’d like you to be my best man, Oliver. Funny things, women,’ he added ruminatively. ‘Up until we actually started talking properly about it Emma had always insisted she didn’t want a traditional wedding, that they were out of date and
unnecessary, and yet now… she wants the whole works—bridesmaids, page-boys… She says it’s to please her mother but I know different.

‘That will mean two big weddings for Harrowby this summer. I still can’t get over old Henry getting married—or rather his mother allowing him to… Hell, Oliver… watch out!’ he protested sharply as his cousin suddenly had to brake quickly to avoid getting too close to the car in front.

‘You’re sure you’re OK?’ he asked in concern. ‘Perhaps we should have stayed in London overnight instead of driving north straight from the flight. If you’re tired, I can take over for a while…’

Oliver made no reply but his mouth had compressed into a hard line and there was a bleak, cold look in his eyes that reminded Piers very much of a younger Oliver just after he’d lost his mother. Something was bothering his cousin, but Piers knew him well enough to know that Oliver wasn’t likely to tell him or anyone else exactly what it was.

‘What the hell is that still doing here?’

Piers frowned as Oliver glared at the Christmas tree in the hallway. There was nothing about it so far as he could see to merit that tone of icy, almost bitter hatred in his cousin’s voice. In fact, he decided judiciously, it was a rather nice tree—wilting now slightly, but still…

‘It’s not Twelfth Night until tomorrow,’ he pointed out to Oliver. ‘I’ll give you a hand dismantling it then, if you like, and—’

‘No,’ Oliver told him curtly. ‘I’ll give Mrs Green a ring and ask her to arrange for Tom to come in and do it. We’re going to be too busy catching up with everything that’s been going on whilst we’ve been in New York.’

Thoughtfully Piers followed Oliver into the kitchen. It wasn’t like his cousin to be so snappy and edgy, and, in point
of fact, he had planned to drive across to York to see his parents whilst they were in the north, but now it seemed as though Oliver had other plans for him.

‘Well, if we’re going to work I’d better go and unpack and have a shower, freshen up a bit,’ he told Oliver.

Upstairs he pushed open the door of the room which traditionally was his whenever he visited. The bed was neatly made up with crisp, clean bedlinen, the room spotless apart from…

Piers’ eyes widened slightly as he saw the small, intimate item of women’s clothing which Mrs Green had obviously laundered and left neatly folded on the bed, no doubt thinking that the small pair of white briefs belonged to Emma.

Only Piers was pretty sure that they didn’t. So who did they belong to and where was their owner now?

Piers knew enough about his cousin to be quite sure that Oliver would not indulge in any kind of brief, meaningless sexual fling. Piers had endured enough lectures from his elder cousin on that subject himself to know that much.

So what exactly was going on? Oliver had made no mention to him of having any visitors recently, either male or female. He could always, of course, show him the briefs and ask him who they belonged to, but, judging from his current mood, such an enquiry was not likely to be very well received.

Another thought occurred to Piers. Was there any connection between the owner of the briefs and his cousin’s present uncharacteristic bad mood?

When Piers returned downstairs Oliver was in his study opening the mail that had accumulated in his absence.

‘Mmm… isn’t it amazing how much junk gets sent through the post?’ Piers commented as he started to help him. ‘Oh, this one looks interesting, Oliver—an invite to Henry’s betrothal party. Well, they certainly are doing things the traditional way, aren’t they?’

‘Give that to me,’ Oliver instructed, his tone of voice so curt that Piers started to frown. He knew that Oliver had never particularly liked either Henry or his parents, especially his mother, but, so far as he knew, the anger he was exhibiting now was completely different from his normal attitude of relaxed indifference towards them.