Fire Under Snow (18 page)

Her mouth was no longer merely receiving his kisses but giving them back. As he shaped her to him, her body did not resist, but molded responsively beneath his hands.

She couldn't believe it when his fingers suddenly drew away. It must have taken iron willpower to release her. He couldn't have done this to her without driving himself more than a little frantic.

Even then, she didn't think it was a calculated, vengeful maneuver, not until he spoke, his voice as cold as ice. “That's how it feels, Lorraine. That's the damnation and the torture. The disgust will follow in a little while, when you realize that you were willing to give yourself to a man who despises you, who thinks you are the lowest of the low. There are two things, above all, that I cannot abide. One is deceit; the other, blackmail, is even dirtier. You are guilty of both.”

He removed himself from the bed with the obvious intention of leaving her to contemplate her guilt and shame. Without a hearing? Perhaps it was silly of her, perhaps she should have let him go, but something in her refused to let the words go unchallenged. So she called out, arresting his step before he got to the bedroom door.

“Is that your verdict? How dare you pronounce me guilty when you won't listen to my side of it!”

He came back. There was something very menacing about his stance as he towered above her, and his clipped “Very well” was not encouraging.

“Will you please allow me the dignity of something, anything, to cover myself up?”

The nearest thing at hand was his blue silk robe, which he picked up and tossed at her, an arrogant smirk curving his mouth, which made her dig her fingernails into the palms of her hands.

“Good idea. Cover yourself up. I'll be able to concentrate better if I can't see so much of you.”

Sliding into it, tying the sash tightly around her waist, she thought that while it would aid
his
concentration, wearing something as personal as his robe wasn't going to do much for hers.

Almost in despair, wishing she had waited to explain when she was more composed, she began shakily, “I never tried to blackmail Jamie. Like you, the very thought of extorting money from someone sickens me. I never even asked Jamie to shoulder what most people considered to be his moral obligation to me.”

“All right,” he cut in testily, patently not believing her. “Stop belaboring the point and get on with the tale.”

“What's the use, if you're not going to believe me?” she said in frustration. It all seemed so hopeless.

“You didn't make it a stipulation that I had to believe you,” he sneered. “You just asked me to listen to you. Well, I'm listening. So get on with it.”

She swallowed. She felt broken before she began and her voice was flat and dead, without expression or conviction. “Jamie's show-business break came on our wedding day. A big- name star fell ill and Jamie was asked to fill his place at short notice.” She used much the same words she had used to explain it to Sir William, but whereas Sir William had listened kindly, Noel's countenance was hard and unyielding.

She felt that she would have got more warmth by talking to a brick wall.

She battled on determinedly, telling him about the canceled honeymoon, booking into a hotel close to where Jamie was appearing, the rehearsals that tied him up for the rest of the day. “I caught the show, but for publicity reasons – you know the way of that better than I – it was thought best for me to return to the hotel by myself. Jamie stayed to have a few drinks, unwind, celebrate his success. He was an instant hit, and from that moment it all took off for him.

‘To go back to that night, I got tired of sitting up for him, so I got into bed. He must have come in after I'd fallen asleep. Apparently, he was careless with a cigarette he was smoking. The first I knew of this was waking up to find that the bed was on fire. You already know about the fire and how I was badly burned.”

“So Jamie was responsible. I'll admit that would give you grounds for bitterness.”

“Grounds for bitterness, but not blackmail,” she said doggedly.

“It doesn't come together, Lorraine. This goes back to the time that I first met Jamie. It's a pity you didn't know this or you could have altered the story to fit,” he drawled sarcastically. “I signed him up on the strength of the success he had that night when he acted as stand-in. He walked into my office the next day and I knew I was buying myself a load of trouble. Just by looking at him I could tell he wouldn't be able to handle the adoration that was in store for him. I would have done him a favor if I'd shown him the door, but it went against human nature not to want a share in such a hot property. There he was – brash, blond, with his beauty unmarked. It struck me as being unusual at the time. Most male faces pick up the odd scar, relic of a schoolboy skirmish or a football tackle. The point I'm getting at is this: You say that Jamie's cigarette started the fire in which you were so terribly burned. Yet the next day he came into my office, with not as much as one single hair on his head singed. How do you account for that?” She knew what Noel was driving at. He was asking how Jamie could have escaped unhurt from a. fire that he had started. A fair question. But just for a moment she left it hanging to dwell on the thought that, while she lay so desperately ill in the hospital, Jamie's only concern had been his career.

She put her hurt aside to say, “We won't ever know the exact details of that night. I don't even know that the fire was started by a lighted cigarette. That was the finding of the forensic experts, and I'll just have to take their word for it. Jamie said he remembered coming into the room and lighting up, but he wasn't clear about much else. I woke up in a panic to find the bed on fire. My first thought was to get out of the room, which I did. I didn't know whether Jamie had come back or not. I wondered if I just might have left him in bed. So I yelled ‘Fire!' at the top of my voice to alert the other hotel guests and went back into the room to make sure. I tried to beat out the flames, not knowing that Jamie wasn't there.”

For the briefest moment she thought she caught a ghost-look of tenderness in his expression that wanted to comfort away the pain that remembering brought and cushion her from further hurt; but just as quickly it was gone, and, if anything, his features were more hardened against her after his momentary weakness.

“If Jamie wasn't in the bed, where was he?”

“In the bathroom,” she said stiffly. “That's it! There's nothing more to tell.”

“I think there is. You haven't explained how Jamie got out of the bathroom.”

“He walked out,” she said, flaring up in retaliation at the disbelief and sarcasm in his tone. “Don't assume that everyone's as rich as you are and can afford to stay in the class of hotel where every room has its own private bathroom. This was before Jamie's career took off, remember, and I was only just beginning to make a name for myself as a beauty consultant. All we could afford was a grotty third-rate hotel with one bathroom to each floor, and the one on our floor was way down the corridor, almost at the other end of the building. And don't ask me how Jamie managed to stumble there in his drunken condition, because I don't know.” Jamie's drunkenness had been blamed for the fire at the time, but she hadn't meant to tell Noel that. He'd goaded her into it. “I was being rushed to the hospital, and I've got to rely on what other people told me.” All the color drained from her face as she lived the horror of it again. She crossed her arms over her chest, as if it were possible to hold in the pain. “I'm sorry,” she apologized. “I thought I could talk about it without getting emotional. I was like this the night you took me to the Cabana. It was seeing Sir William again for the first time since I'd stopped going back to the hospital for treatment. I broke up talking to him about it, but I thought that I'd got it out of my system and I wouldn't be upset again. I'm sorry.”

Why, oh why had she had to bring Sir William's name into it? If he'd felt the tiniest sliver of sympathy for her, mention of that name buried it under an avalanche of scorn.

“I ought to have known that I'd be wrong about that, too. You went outside with him, I don't know where, but it had all the signs of a back-seat-of-the-car job. You returned after an indecently long time with your hair messed up and your lipstick smudged, but, of course, it's my suspicious mind that is at fault, because it was all perfectly innocent and above-board.”

“Stop being so sarcastic. It
was
innocent. I was distressed and Sir William was comforting me.”

“And I know how.”

His fingers clamped to her jaw, jerking it so cruelly back that she thought her neck would snap. And then his mouth was on hers, a demanding assault that ground her lips against her teeth, forcing her head down on the bed.

As his weight came crashing beside her she was seized by a sick sensation of black anguish. She felt as though she were dissolving in misery and fear as she tried to combat the dark forces of his desire for her. Driven by jealousy and bitterness, he couldn't keep his hands off her. It was a mockery of making love. Sheer hatred would have been a better name for it.

She fought in cold desperation, twisting her body to evade the searching hands roughly pushing aside the material of her borrowed robe, only to be brought back and controlled by greater force.

“Can you honestly say that Sir William has never known your body?” he said, his splayed hands stroking down her back.

She was frantically trying to stem the reaction that was flowing up inside her at his touch. She was angry with herself for responding every time, even to his abuse, and she felt a desperate need to hit back, hating him for bringing her down to this low level of degradation.

“No, I don't deny it,” she said wildly. She didn't add that she was under anaesthetic at the time that Sir William's hands were exploring her body, the purpose being to take the skin to graft onto her hands, and that he had never touched her in the way Noel meant, but only in a professional capacity.

Angry color swept up to his hairline. “You slut! You're anybody's, aren't you? You're not particular who has you!”

She couldn't resist one more dig, even though she knew that she had already gone too far. “I can't be particular,” she flung at him. “Otherwise I wouldn't be here with you.”

He was incensed beyond speech, but his eyes more than made up for that. They bored into her, twin missiles of malevolence and acrimony. Her heart began to hammer rapidly and the blood came singing to her ears.

“What are you going to do?” she asked in terror.

“Nothing!” he managed at length. “If I murdered you I'd be punished just as if I'd rid the world of a decent woman.”

After Noel stormed out of the bedroom, rocking the door on its hinges as he slammed it shut, several minutes ticked by before she felt composed enough to check the time. It was three- thirty A.M. Obviously her wish was to go home. But how could she get there without asking Noel for his help, either to drive her or phone for a taxi for her? She looked at her ruined dress, which was all she had to wear, and lay back to sob out her humiliation and frustration.

Noel's cruelty would have been easier to bear if she had never seen his kinder side during their stay with Aunt Leonora, a side of him which had lasted right up to the time he went to America. His reason for going was to straighten Jamie out, and, like a fool, she hadn't wanted to make things worse for him by telling Noel of their involvement. If only she hadn't considered Jamie. He had never considered her. If only she'd stuck to her guns and confessed before he went. But she hadn't; she had kept silent about her marriage, and so Jamie had got in first, spinning all those lies about her trying to blackmail him. Jamie had done this to get out of a tight corner and not with the deliberate intention of hurting her. He was unaware that she even knew Noel, let alone that she was on friendly terms with him. She could see how it must have happened. She knew what it was like to be on the receiving end of Noel's anger, and Jamie had grabbed at the first thing he could think of to justify himself. A man under pressure of blackmail can be excused for going off the rails. Oh! She crumpled her hand bitterly against her mouth, trying to stem the fresh tide of despair sweeping over her. It was all so futile.

She woke suddenly, surprised to realize that she had slept. Her eyes felt hollow and unrefreshed; her head was aching from the knots of tension in her neck.

It was the intensity of Noel's gaze which had awakened her. He was fully dressed, exuding the faint smell of aftershave, and he loomed over her, his face grim and forbidding.

What was he making of her pallor, the dark shadows she knew would be under her eyes, her eyes themselves, lackluster and fearful? In his mind, did these things point to her guilt?

“Good morning,” she said weakly.

“That remains to be seen. I've phoned Jamie and told him to get over here. I'm sure you won't object to a confrontation with your estranged husband?”

“I've nothing to be afraid of,” she said with more confidence than she felt, before his statement got through to her. “Do you mean that you've ordered Jamie home from Las Vegas?”

“He doesn't have quite that far to travel. Didn't I tell you? I brought him back with me. He was all washed up over there. About the only thing he wasn't into was drugs. Even so, in the short time he was there he left a trail of havoc in his wake. I was lucky to get him out of the country without charges being brought against him. If you'd deliberately set out to wreck him, you couldn't have done a better job.”

“He really convinced you that his phony blackmail story was on the level! You think I'm lying, not Jamie, don't you?”

“Let's put it this way. When I told Jamie to get around here because I had his wife in my apartment, he was delighted. Hardly the reaction of a man with his back against the wall. He assumed I'd set up the meeting to extricate him from your clutches, that I'd contacted you to sort out your nasty bit of blackmailing mischief. You don't look very surprised.”